Subj : UTF-8 nodelist report
To : Nicholas Boel
From : Michiel van der Vlist
Date : Mon Mar 10 2025 03:26 pm
Hello Nicholas,
On Sunday March 09 2025 21:03, you wrote to me:
>> Some keys have been made into "dead keys" by the driver. E,g, to get an
>> 'e' with diaresis I first press the key for the double quote, followed
>> by the 'e'. To type the double quote itself, i have to press that key
>> twice. It is easy once you are used to it.
NB> After 30+ years of not doing it, it may be difficult to get used to
NB> it.
After the dead key method was introduced I got accustomed to it fairly quickly. And that was also after several decades of not doing it...
Then again here in The Neterlands we are used to dealing with accents and diaresis. They are paty of out language.
NB> I'm not saying it's impossible, as I can do ALT-0235 to get the
NB> desired "ë",
ALT 137 in DOS.
There is the alternative of "AltGr". The right Alt key acts as a second "shift" key. E.g. "AltGr 5" is the Euro sign.
NB> but it's a bit of a challenge to try to remember to do
NB> every time I type my name. :)
Yeah, that's awfull.
In DOS there was the option of defining a keyboard macro for things like that. I don't know about Windows or Linus. Did not need it any mor4e.
>> Understood. So I take it you are not really interested in the UTF
>> nodelist project to get your name with an 'ë' in the nodelist?
NB> I actually thought we discussed this some time ago.
Yes we did, but I do not recall the details.
NB> I also believe I was getting the DAILYUTF from you at some point, but
NB> possibly when your system went down, and stayed down for some time, it
NB> was stopped for some reason (I don't think I ever turned it off).
You want me to turn it on again?
NB> Is anyone in zone 1 involved (I'm unsure if ZC1 is able to forward it
NB> on for me)? Or would the submissions need to go to Ward, since I'm an
NB> RC?
At the moment no one in Z1 participates in de dailyutf,
>> The ZC does double processing. One for the ASCII list and one for
>> the UTF list. For the UTF list MakeNl is run with ALLOW8BIT set.
>> For regions that dot not participate in the UTF list, the ZC uses
>> the ASCII segment for both list. For regions that do participate,
>> their seperate UTF region segment is used for the UTF list.
NB> I suppose anyone involved would have to double process with and
NB> without the ALLOW8BIT option, correct?
Yes. When I was RC I also did it. It is not hard, the UTF part is mostly a copy of the ASCII setup. Except for the file names and the ALLOW8BIT setting.
>> RC20 does not participate in the UTF nodelist project. He does not
>> send two different segments. But his segment is not pure ASCII, it
>> contain some characters in Latin-1. So for the ASCII list, the ZC's
>> MakNl substitutes question marks for the non ASCII characters. For
>> the UTF list, they are passed "as is". But that was only was
>> noticed after I started my weekly error report.
NB> Is it even LATIN-1? Or does it just end up that way because of CP437
NB> probably turns into ISO-8859-1 on Windows?
No. Here in Western Europe the default code page for DOS was 850. That is still the case in the Windows CLI. In the Linux community Latin-1 is popular.
NB> Isn't CP437 -> ISO-8859-1 basically the same as ASCII -> UTF-8 where
NB> everything in the former is also represented in the latter (then
NB> again, ASCII would be part of many, if not every charset)?
ASCII is a subset of nearly all charactersets in use, with the exception of the obsolete national 7 bit character sets.
I recall Björn mentioning that is is Latin-1. But does it mnatter? The point is that it is NOT UTF-8 and therefore an error in he UTF nodelist.
