Re: Reviewing philosophies and assumptions

[Hitoshi Doi <doi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

	I'm finally catching up with all of this mail..

# Well, well, I do consider that you read all this stuff very carefully,
# John, so I wondered why you missed my points. Now I know:-)
# 
# The Japanese use of 2022 for mail is well documented, but in Japanese.
# Their 2022 use is very well documented, as in EUC and other character
# set encoding use. It is quite wide-spread, as far as I know.
# It is in general use outside Japan, as it is available with every
# X implementation - standard. I think you can call X "a real
# implementation". Well, I am a bit unhappy about talking on issues
# related to Japan, being no Japanese; maybe the people coming
# from Japan could enlighten us?

	7 bit JIS code is used for mail on JUNET because
	8 bit is not allowed in SMTP.  If 8 bit characters were
	allowed, there would be no need for this conversion.
	Since the file codes that are used is 8 bit whether it is
	EUC(UJIS) or Shift JIS, code conversions have to be done
	when sending or reading mail.
	So, to send mail one has to..

	% edit file
	% convert file to 7 bit JIS
	% send file

	Of course with Emacs, it can be done in fewer keystrokes.

	A problem with this is that there are some non-un*x-like
	systems that don't support 7 bit JIS.  They don't have a
	7 bit JIS to local kanji code conversion program.
	Also, non-expert users don't understand why they can't just
	send their text files through mail.

Hitoshi Doi, International Systems Engineering    doi@jrdmax.jrd.dec.com
Japan Research and Development Center             decwrl!jrdmax.enet!doi
Digital Equipment Corporation Japan               doi@decvax.dec.com