From: Kai Henningsen (kaih@khms.westfalen.de)
Date: Fri Jan 05 2001 - 08:51:00 CST
rra@stanford.edu (Russ Allbery) wrote on 28.12.00 in <ylzohgff35.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu>:
> J B Moreno <planb@newsreaders.com> writes:
>
> > Posters SHOULD avoid using control characters in US-ASCII (or other
> > CCSs) except for tab (ASCII 9), formfeed (ASCII 12), and backspace
> > (ASCII 8). Tab signifies sufficient horizontal white space to reach
> > the next of a set of fixed positions; posters are warned that there
> > is no standard set of positions, so tabs should be avoided if precise
> > spacing is essential. Formfeed (which is sometimes referred to as the
> > "spoiler character") signifies a point at which a reading agent
> > SHOULD pause and await reader interaction before displaying further
> > text. Reading agents MUST NOT pass other control characters or escape
> > sequences unaltered to the output device.
>
> I assume that the intention of saying "in US-ASCII" is to make it clear
> that other characters can be used when the character set is something else
> (in other words, MIME trumps all this)? ESC is a valid character in some
> Asian encodings and should be passed unaltered to the output device in
> some circumstances.
I'm pretty certain most users of such character sets would be quite upset
of being hit with unfiltered ANSI screen control escapes, too.
You might need the exact same escapes on the terminal side, but it
shouldn't get there by blindly passing it along.
MfG Kai