From: bshantz@spry.com
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 94 13:52:19 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: McCoy is Right! New Mail Format to Start Now.
Message-ID: <9412152147.AA23272@homer.spry.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Perry Metzger writes:
>Sorry, Tim, but this isn't true. I know people who still own VIC-20s
>that can't handle 80 columns. Also, users of ASR-33 teletypes might be
>left out by the requirement to handle full ASCII. I was using an
>ASR-33 full time only 15 years ago.

15 years ago, I was a 9 year old in the fifth grade who called the teacher a 
"nasty" name and was told to write 500 sentences as a reprimand.  I asked if 
they could be typed, she said yes.  So, I prompt;y went up to the 40 column 
display on the Apple IIe and wrote a four line, Apple Basic program that would 
repeatedly print 500 sentences saying, "It is not right to call the teacher 
names."  When I handed it to her, she new she'd been set up.  That didn't go 
over well as I remember.

Anyway, that's not really what I wanted to say.  I wanted to say that as a 
company that writes a Mail package.  One of the biggest complaints of our 
customers has been lack of MIME support.  Also, we have been severely "wrist 
slapped" for not formatting our mail messages to 80 characters so "normal 
people" could read it on their mail readers.  So, my point, the market right 
now is for MIME support and user setting message widths.  You can't please 
everyone all the time.

>Now, I know that all usenet postings in Japan these days use ISO-2022
>encoded characters, and MIME and all that, and that people in Russia
>use similar methods to carry their stuff, but they are just
>bounders. 

Japanese characters are considerably different.  I've been on some Japanese 
news servers that you just can't read with a normal news reader just because 
they require graphical Japanese characters.  (Kanji, Katakana, or Hiragana ... 
depends on the group.)  By the way, I was testing a news reader, I can't read 
Kanji.

-- Brad

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Brad Shantz                      bshantz@spry.com
Senior Software Engineer
SPRY Inc.                        Direct #:     (206)-442-8251
316 Occidental Ave. S.           Main #:       (206)-447-0300
Suite 316                        Fax #:        (206)-447-9008
Seattle, WA 98104                WWW URL: http://WWW.SPRY.COM
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