Subj : The seven-bit restriction
To   : Michiel van der Vlist
From : Bj”rn Felten
Date : Fri Jul 27 2018 01:25:02

 MvdV> Some call this process diplomacy. Go in small steps. Don't try to break
 MvdV> down the wall in one day. That won't work. First make a door but do not
 MvdV> open it yet. Then make a peep hole to raise the other side's curiosity.
 MvdV> Then give them a key so they can open the door. Small steps...

   I know, Michiel. In 1999 I opened the wall. Many sysops adopted my Y2K 
patch. I told Ward about it over and over again, but he never remembered the 
previous time.

   Now, I opened the wall 15 years ago. I then spent a year or so, some five 
years ago with this new project. This was some five years ago.

   Yes indeed, I know all about the small steps and so on, but I am getting 
slightly frustrated with the constant brick wall I've been facing for all those 
year.

 MvdV> Eh.. if you completely disabled it, would that not be an UNconritional
 MvdV> jump?

   Dunno what that means. I changed JNZ xx to JNZ 00. In my book it's a 
conditional jump changed from somewhere further down the code into a jump to 
the next instruction.

 BF>> Who cares?

 MvdV> I for one.

   Why?

 MvdV> So why don't we completely do away with the fields for the system name,
 MvdV> the sysop name and the location. They serve no purpose whatsoever in
 MvdV> regarding mailers making a connection.

   Depends. Most systems depend on them. But I agree that we could easily let 
go of the old, outdated FTS specifications, as long as we maintain the comma 
limited structure.

 MvdV>>> I we allow more than ASCII, we should allow ALL Fidonet
 MvdV>>> participants to have their name properly spelled.

 BF>> Nah, lets do it!

 MvdV> Let us do what?

   What you suggest above.

 MvdV> So I suggest you make the next step. Instead of using an 8 bit character
 MvdV> set to encode the ” for your name in the nodelist, encode it in UTF-8.
 MvdV> This will show as TWO question marks in the Z2 nodelist.

   Good suggestion. But I think I'll stay with your one-step suggestion for the 
moment. In five or so years, when we have a ZC that can handle the nodelist 
properly, I'll consider expanding my umlaut project in the nodelist.  8-)

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