RE: A basic question on encoding Latin characters

From: Frank da Cruz (fdc@watsun.cc.columbia.edu)
Date: Thu Sep 30 1999 - 11:17:13 EDT


Karlsson Kent - keka <keka@im.se> wrote:
> Frank wrote:
> > or word processor (etc), is the fixed-width aspect. I can send you
> > email (as I am doing now, with my medieval text-based email client)
> > with every expectation that it will look the same to you as it does
> > to me, even if it includes tables, source code, or anything else
>
> For heavens sake don't assume that! My default view of emails is via
> a proportional font. And so it is for many others too. And even if
> I do something to view a message via a "fixed width" font, the tab
> positions are not where you had them. And I'm not too inclined to
> fiddle with the tab positions, unless it is a VERY important e-mail.
>
This is a topic that was discussed at great length in May-July 1997 and
then again in July-August 1999. The upshot is, I need to write a draft
Unicode technical report to clarify what is meant by "plain text", and
to propose guidelines for vendor- and application-independent
self-contained preformatted Unicode plain text that can endure into the
distant future and remain useful even as fads and fancies change.

Anybody who would like to review the discussion so far should be able to
find it in the Unicode mail archive:

  ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/MailArchive/

- Frank



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