On Mon, 4 Aug 1997 15:14:02 -0500, Gilbert Brenson Lazan
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>...my insistence upon the elimination of the
>use of non-ASCII symbols (accents and puntuation such as a, e, i, o, u, u,
>n, ?, !) as a subversive attempt at cultural hegemony.  I maintain that it
>is a pragmatic concession to those that can't read those symbols and get a
>mess of other stuff instead of the accented letter.

How many users are impacted on the 2 sides?  If most people have systems
that can make/display the proper characters then I would suggest you are on
thin ground to insist they not be used.  If only a few have suitable
systems, then you may be right.  German, French, Italian, several
scandinavian languages all have the same problem, not to mention the
cyrillic alphabet languages!  Some people are still using dumb terminals
which cannot display the special chars.

>My question is where is the problem?  Does it lay in the e-mail software
>(as some insist) or in the keyboard programming (as others insist) or in
>the server capabilities (as I have been led to believe).

Actually a messy combination of all 3, whose final solution may be
different for every subscriber!  Whether the sender's system can generate
it depends on user knowledge of their OS and keyboard use to make the
proper character code (or choosing the right char from Windows CharMap).
Generally LISTSERV is 8-bit neutral, passing all such special characters
unchanged as just another hex code (which codes depends on the particular
OS).  OS translations (eg from EBCIDIC to/from ASCII) handled by the OS
outside of LISTSERV's control are another matter.

Whether the reader's system can properly display the special code depends
again on correct user configuration of their system as to code pages, char
sets, etc.  Many users haven't the foggiest idea of how to do this
correctly.  In some cases it depends on OS settings buried in obscure
places, in other cases it can be accomplished by special settings within
the email pgm itself.  People with systems otherwise technically capable
may not have the right settings so can't see them.  It's simply a mess.

--
 ________________________________________________________________________
 Ben Parker ............ (Oak Park IL) .......... [log in to unmask]