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]