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   REPLYADDR: ozznixon@gmail.com   
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   PID: ExchangeBBS NNTP Server v3.1/Linux64   
   TID: ExchangeBBS FTN Tosser/JAM v1.19.04 (Beta 4.09)   
   On 2019-04-23 20:30:09 +0000, Maurice Kinal -> Alan Ianson said:   
      
   > Hey Alan!   
   >    
   >  AI> It would be best if we moved to UTF-8 natively but that could get   
   >  AI> messy   
   >    
   > There is an understatement if I've ever seen one.  So far I have only seen   
   one   
   > web based BBS that can get the word wrapping right and it is in Russia.   
   > Others I've seen get the characters correctly but then count them as bytes   
   > instead of characters so that word wrapping will be thrown off.  Add to that   
   > the fact that ansi BBSes cannot count higher than 80 and it gets even   
   messier   
   > .... nevermind smart devices that cannot even count anywhere near 80   
   > characters.   
      
   LMAO! Sad but true...   
      
   > If you were asking me, and I know that you weren't, the two digit year is a   
   > MUCH bigger issue and given it has been roughly 17 years since it was   
   declared   
   > obsolete I don't hold out much faith in ANYTHING ever being fixed in Fidonet   
   > ... unless of course you're like me and totally take advantage of FTN   
   > crippleware and ignore the obvious weaknesses such as datetime stamps, CHRS   
   > and UTC offset kludges, etc.  Also while I am ranting, all the crappy binary   
   > data in headers, especially the pktHeader which are nothing but wasted byes.   
      
   Well, I am attacking it the other way around ... I am using    
   TRichEdit.com's Editor component - which is UTF8 only now. And working    
   on Character sets, without fully understanding the variances. But, I am    
   reading, and asking. ;-)   
      
   Per the PKT header(s), I do not mind them - my challenge was these    
   lines have ^a kludge markers, these lines don't, then the end has    
   ^aPATH. To me, it would be best if all the kludge lines, including    
   tear, origin, seen, path all preface the text... and the text simply    
   ends with a null ^@. Parsing would be a snap, tossers would be    
   lightning fast, ridiculously easy to code. Yeah, we could do it like    
   Email and NNTP headers vs bodies - but, then it wouldn't be fidonet, it    
   would be Internet. ;-)   
      
   The challange is all of the obsolete binaries that are still    
   online/involved. I spent the past year building FMTP (Fidonet Mail    
   Transport Protocol), a hybrid of SMTP/NNTP as far as    
   communication/commands - even to the point that a BBS would simply use    
   the FMTP server as their local message base. Spoke with a few sysops,    
   and noone wanted to give up having the messages on their local system.    
   Even when I pointed out, it would be 100% cloud based backend on public    
   CDN networks... e.g. No one in control, the 6 FMTP server would do    
   real-time replication of posts and the messages could be access as pull    
   down on demand (so it could be displayed in a full-screen viewer, or a    
   text based stream, or a web forum... i have not given up, just put it    
   on the back burner for now...   
      
   PS. Do you know in CP850/CP855 - the highbit characters for drawing    
   boxes - is it the double line or single line version that is missing    
   elements? (Somewhere I read, one of these two does not support all of    
   the edges/corners for drawing boxes. However, both Wiki pages for them    
   all:   
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_850   
   and   
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_855   
      
   I know storing everything in CP437 and trying to translate to 850, 855    
   is not 1 to 1. And in Linux, I can store everything is UTF8 and be done    
   with it. I have learned that the first 3 bytes help me know what I am    
   dealing with - even in source code:   
      
   If Copy(Ws,1,3)=#239#187#191 then ... it's UTF8 encoded (be it message,    
   source, web, text file).   
      
   Not sure if everyone's Linux does that - but every machine I have    
   contains those 3 bytes its a UTF8 stream.   
      
   (Still learning)   
   --    
   .. Ozz Nixon   
   ... Author ExchangeBBS (suite)   
   .... Since 1983 BBS Developer   
      
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