[OT] Re: Encoding for Mail and News?

[Roland Mas <mas@echo.fr>]

Niklas Matthies (2000-10-20 23:25:18 +0200) :

> A few people and I are debating on what encoding to use for japanese
> characters for usenet news (and also for e-mail), because there will
> be a new german newsgroup for people interested in Japanese language
> and culture. So far, my belief was that iso-2022-jp was the de facto
> standard for japanese mail and news messages. The others seem to
> think that plain EUC or Shift-JIS are also valid. (That's primarily
> because Netscape can understand all of them when used as mail and/or
> news reader.)

Just for reference: the same question applied with the
fr.lettres.langue.japonaise newsgroup, in the French-speaking
hierarchy.  Both French and German use Latin-1, but ISO-2022-JP,
EUC-JP and SJIS do not contain some of the required characters (the
Umläute[*] for instance).  What is actually used is usually
ISO-2022-JP and (rarely) EUC-JP.  What is used more and more is UTF-8,
though, since it basically rules and more and more newsreaders know
it.  There's a discussion on a French-speaking newsgroup about Chinese
too, and Unicode is regarded as really convenient since it will allow
a certain permeability between those two groups.  You might want to
consult an Italian too, I think they also have a Japanese newsgroup.

  If you haven't noticed, I'm a Unicode activist.  Join us, impose the
UTF-8 acceptance in all newsgroups (for now, it is just tolerated in a
specific group, but still supposedly forbidden in the rest of fr.*).

  Unicode rocks :-)

Obd-j@l.d.o: apt-get install emacs20 gnus mule-ucs

[*] Umlauten?  Umlauts?  It seems like forever since high school...

Roland.
-- 
Roland Mas

Oshitemo damedara, hiite mina.
  -- Proverbe japonais