Vitaliy wrote:

> Chris McSweeny wrote:
>> No, sorry, it's you who is in the wrong by assuming that everybody will be
>> able to see the ohm symbol correctly in their mail reader. 

FWIW, I didn't assume this. If you re-read my message, you'll notice that I
did not write this, nor anything to this effect. OTOH, I do kind of, yes,
because there are very few non-standard mail readers in use. (The fact that
you see it, and probably the very large majority, and this with mostly free
mail readers, kind of speaks for itself.)

>> It's not something which is specified as standard behaviour for e-mail,
>> as readers only have to cope with 7-bit characters - if you start using
>> characters in the extended ASCII set, then all bets are off 

Have you read the relevant RFC? Encoding character sets in emails is very
much standardized (that's why you see it correctly). If an email client
doesn't know how to display an encoding, it should do something sensible
(like warning the user that it doesn't understand the message, for
example). Just displaying a different character set is not sensible, IMO. 

FWIW, "all bets are off" is not correct. The message header of the message
I sent contained the following lines:
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-7"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

These are clearly defined, and very much standard these days.

Olin's reply contains the same headers. It's not unreasonable to assume
that his mail reader knows what to do with them (that is, display them
correctly) if it sends out these headers. If it doesn't know but still
sends them out, it's broken, no? At least it wouldn't pass my personal QA.

>> [...] but you can't complain when somebody can't see it correctly that
>> it's their newsreader at fault. 

1) I didn't complain; Olin did.
2) I didn't say that it's his newsreader's fault; I said that it's his mail
setup's fault. AFAIK, this includes more than a simple mail reader, and
some part of it is non-standard. (That is, it follows a private Olin
standard. Not sure this qualifies for standard conformity, but it certainly
seems to qualify for "standard" conformity :)

You're obviously missing a part of the history here (which I also mentioned
in my message). We've been through this a few years ago already, and Olin
knows that his mail setup is faulty -- he just doesn't care (he said so
much back then). He also apparently forgot that this has been discussed
here at length (another of these exchanges where he thinks he's always
right, and in the end he wasn't...).

>> That's the sort of attitude which comes with the arrogance of being part
>> of the English speaking world (yes I am a native English speaker, from
>> the country which invented it), since people who aren't native English
>> speakers will almost inevitably be using a different character set.

Now this was really a shot in the water. Vitaliy is correct: I live in
Brazil and I'm originally from Germany. (I'm actually flattered that you
didn't notice my "accent" :) It may surprise you (but if you really think
about it, it is actually not that surprising) that this sort of problem is
more typical for the English speaking world, as some seem to assume that
everybody only speaks ASCII. (Olin falls in this category, and this isn't
just guessing: he said so earlier.) Outside the English speaking world,
this ASCII "arrogance" (since you brought up this term) is not really that
prevalent; people generally know better that in order to communicate,
following international standards (again, there are a few RFCs that
standardize this sort of thing) is important. You won't find many there who
know that their mail setup is broken WRT character sets and who don't fix
it. (To be fair, you don't find many of this kind in the English-speaking
world, either. But here is one...)

Also, the character set my mail reader was using is, while not exactly
exotic, not something that a typical English-speaking user would use too
often (unless, of course, he uses the omega letter :)

So... please read (I mean /read/) my message again; you seem to have missed
or misunderstood most of it.


> IMO, the contest b/w Gerhard and Olin has gone too far, and this may be the 
> time to drop it. Can't we just all agree that you guys are both wrong?

On what question? There were a few... :)

BTW, Vitaliy, I just sent you a private message. But given your email
address, I'm not sure you'll actually get it. If you read this (but didn't
get the other message), could you please send me an email from an account
that you read? 

Gerhard

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