In a message dated 2001-05-18 13:25:06 Pacific Daylight Time,
edward.cherlin.sy.67@aya.yale.edu writes:
> Last year, as previously the year before, we discussed the
> possibility of defining some standard Unicode plain text formats. The
> discussions foundered on the differences between text files meant for
> people to read, such as e-mail, FAQs, and so on, and text files meant
> for computers to process, such as delimited data files. We could not
> agree, for example, whether a limit on line length was to be
> required, permitted, or forbidden. We could not even agree that the
> rules would be different for different cases, and that we would
> attempt to enumerate the cases our standard would cover.
>
> This BOM-as-signature debate is of the same type. Is it to be
> required, permitted, forbidden, or something else? The short answer
> is No. Users do not agree, and software cannot be made to agree, not
> even if a formal standard were created and widely used.
The more times I read Edward's response, the more convinced I am of its
essential truth. I can add nothing of significance to it.
-Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
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