[Alpine-info] Alpine is converting ? to ??

[Mike Miller]

On Tue, 10 Mar 2009, Barry Landy wrote:


> On Tue, 10 Mar 2009, Mike Miller wrote:

>

> :>On Tue, 10 Mar 2009, Barry Landy wrote:

> :>

> :>> It was incredibly hard to get persons from USA to understand the problems

> :>> experienced by Europeans in multi-lingual documents (including but not

> :>> limited to, email); eg someone with a German name sending an email in Danish

> :>> to someone with a French name. All 3 character sets need to be

> :>> simultaneously available and "you could just switch to a different set" did

> :>> not cut it.

> :>

> :>What didn't those USA persons understand about that?

> :>

>

> They persisted in thinking that character set switching would cut the 

> mustard. White papers with example after example were needed to break 

> down the engrained attitudes.



Switching back and forth within a single message?  That's an interesting 
concept.  I guess you'd need special switching codes that would be hidden 
from the reader.  Also, all recipients would have to be able to handle all 
the different char sets.

I have to say, I've been very happy since switching to UTF-8.  Someone 
sent Chinese characters earlier today and I could actually see them 
instead of seeing a load of ugliness.  I was held back for years by a 
terminal that didn't do UTF-8, and I didn't know it.  Life is now much 
easier.

Mike