• FidoNews 36:21 [00/07]: The Front Page

    From FidoNews Robot@2:2/2 to All on Mon May 27 00:54:41 2019
    The F I D O N E W S Volume 36, Number 21 27 May 2019 +--------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
    | |The newsletter of the | | |
    | | FidoNet community. | | Netmail attach to (POTS): |
    | | | | Editor @ 2:2/2 (+46-31-960447) |
    | | ____________| | |
    | | / __ | Netmail attach to (BinkP): |
    | | / / \ | Editor @ 2:203/0 |
    | | WOOF! ( /|oo \ | |
    | \_______\(_| /_) | Email attach to: |
    | _ @/_ \ _ | b @ felten dot se |
    | | | \ \\ | |
    | | (*) | \ ))| |
    | |__U__| / \// | Editor: Bj”rn Felten |
    | ______ _//|| _\ / | |
    | / Fido \ (_/(_|(____/ | Newspapers should have no friends. |
    | (________) (jm) | -- JOSEPH PULITZER | +--------------------------+-----------------------------------------+


    Table of Contents
    1. GENERAL ARTICLES ......................................... 1
    Ward Dossche’s Corolary on Godwin’s Law .................. 1
    2. LIST OF FIDONET IPV6 NODES ............................... 2
    List of IPv6 nodes ....................................... 2
    3. JAMNNTPD SERVERS LIST .................................... 5
    The Johan Billing JamNNTPd project ....................... 5
    4. FIDONEWS'S FIDONET SOFTWARE LISTING ...................... 6
    5. SPECIAL INTEREST ......................................... 13
    Statistics from the Fidoweb .............................. 13
    Nodelist Stats ........................................... 14
    6. FIDONEWS INFORMATION ..................................... 16
    How to Submit an Article ................................. 16
    Credits, Legal Infomation, Availability .................. 18

    --- Azure/NewsPrep 3.0
    * Origin: Home of the Fidonews (2:2/2.0)
  • From FidoNews Robot@2:2/2 to All on Mon May 27 00:54:41 2019
    =================================================================
    GENERAL ARTICLES =================================================================

    Ward Dossche’s Corolary on Godwin’s Law
    Ward Dossche - 2:292/854


    "When a discussion in an electronic forum with a US citizen
    grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the
    likelihood of becoming sidetracked to US Presidential
    elections, the 2nd Amendment or ‘We saved your asses in
    WW2’ increases exponentially."

    Godwin's Law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi
    Analogies) is a saying made by Mike Godwin in 1990.
    The law states: "As a discussion on the Internet
    grows longer, the likelihood of a comparison of a
    person's being compared to Hitler or another Nazi
    reference, increases.".


    -----------------------------------------------------------------

    --- Azure/NewsPrep 3.0
    * Origin: Home of the Fidonews (2:2/2.0)
  • From FidoNews Robot@2:2/2 to All on Mon May 27 00:54:41 2019
    =================================================================
    LIST OF FIDONET IPV6 NODES =================================================================

    List of IPv6 nodes
    By Michiel van der Vlist, 2:280/5555

    Updated 20 May 2019


    Node Nr. Sysop Type Provider Remark

    1 2:280/464 Wilfred van Velzen Native Xs4All f
    2 2:280/5003 Kees van Eeten Native Xs4All f
    3 2:5019/40 Konstantin Kuzov T-6in4 he.net f PO4
    4 2:280/5555 Michiel van der Vlist Native Ziggo f
    5 1:320/219 Andrew Leary Native Comcast f
    6 2:221/1 Tommi Koivula T-6in4 he.net f
    7 2:221/6 Tommi Koivula T-6in4 he.net f
    8 2:5053/54 Denis Mikhlevich Native TTK-Volga
    9 2:5030/257 Vova Uralsky Native PCextreme
    10 1:154/10 Nicholas Bo‰l Native Spectrum f
    11 2:203/0 Bj”rn Felten T-6in4 he.net
    12 2:280/5006 Kees van Eeten Native Xs4All f INO4
    13 3:712/848 Scott Little T-6RD iiNet f IO
    14 2:5020/545 Alexey Vissarionov Native Hetzner f
    15 1:103/17 Stephen Hurd T-6in4 he.net
    16 2:5020/9696 Alexander Skovpen T-6to4 Westlan
    17 2:301/812 Benoit Panizzon Native IMPNET
    18 2:421/790 Viktor Cizek T-6in4 he.net
    19 2:222/2 Kim Heino Native TeliaSonera
    20 3:633/280 Stephen Walsh Native AusNetServers f
    21 2:463/877 Alex Shuman Native Nline f IO
    22 1:19/10 Matt Bedynek T-6in4 he.net
    23 3:770/1 Paul Hayton T-6in4 he.net
    24 2:5053/58 Alexander Kruglikov Native Aruba S.p.a f
    25 1:103/1 Stephen Hurd Native Choopa
    26 3:633/281 Stephen Walsh Native Internode
    27 2:310/31 Richard Menedetter Native DE-NETCUP f
    28 3:633/410 Tony Langdon Native IINET
    29 2:5005/33 Evgeny Zyatkov Native RUCITYCONNECT f 6DWN
    30 2:5020/329 Oleg Lukashin Native Comfortel f
    31 2:246/1305 Emil Schuster Native TAL.DE
    32 2:2448/4000 Tobias Burchhardt Native DTAG IO
    33 2:331/51 Marco d'Itri Native BOFH-IT
    34 1:154/30 Mike Miller Native LINODE
    35 1:282/1031 Jeff Smith Native Qwest
    36 2:5001/100 Dmitry Protasoff Native Hetzner
    37 2:5059/38 Andrey Mundirov T-6in4 he.net
    38 2:240/5853 Philipp Giebel Native Hetzner
    39 2:2452/413 Ingo Juergensmann Native RRBONE-COLO f
    40 1:123/10 Wayne Smith T-6in4 he.net
    41 2:5021/46 Dmitry Komissarov Native THEFIRST
    42 2:4500/1 Eugene Kozhuhovsky Native DATAHATA6 6DWN
    43 1:135/300 Eric Renfro Native Choopa
    44 1:103/13 Stephen Hurd Native Choopa
    45 2:5020/1042 Michael Dukelsky Native FORPSI Ktis f
    46 2:5095/0 Sergey V. Efimoff T-6in4 he.net
    47 2:5095/20 Sergey V. Efimoff T-6in4 he.net
    48 4:902/26 Fernando Toledo T-6in4 he.net 6DWN
    49 2:400/2992 Avshalom Donskoi Native OVH f PM*1
    50 2:5019/400 Konstantin Kuzov Native LT-LT
    51 2:467/239 Mihail Kapitanov T-6in4 he.net f
    52 2:463/1331 Andrei Dzedolik Native DIGITALOCEAN
    53 2:5010/275 Evgeny Chevtaev T-6in4 TUNNELBROKER-0 f
    54 2:5020/736 Egor Glukhov Native VPSVILLE f
    55 2:280/2000 Michael Trip Native Xs4All
    56 2:230/38 Benny Pedersen Native Linode
    57 2:460/58 Stas Mishchenkov T-6in4 he.net f
    58 1 135/367 Antonio Rivera Native RRSW-V6
    59 2:5020/2123 Anton Samsonov T-6in4 he.net
    60 2:5020/2332 Andrey Ignatov Native ru.rtk
    61 2:5005/49 Victor Sudakov T-6in4 he.net
    62 2:5005/77 Valery Lutoshkin T-6in4 NTS f
    63 2:5005/106 Alexey Osiyuk T-6in4 he.net f
    64 1:153/757 Alan Ianson Native TELUS
    65 2:5057/53 Ivan Kovalenko T-6in4 he.net f
    66 2:5020/921 Andrew Savin Native Starlink
    67 2:5010/352 Dmitriy Smirnov Native EkranTV f
    69 2:292/854 Ward Dossche Native Belgacom OO
    69 2:469/122 Sergey Zabolotny Native ARUBA-NET f
    70 2:5053/400 Denis Mikhlevich Native TTK-Volga
    71 1:14/5 Jeff Smith Native Qwest

    T-6in4 Static 6in4
    T-AYIY Dynamic AYIYA
    T-6to4 6to4
    T-6RD 6RD

    Remarks:

    f Has a ::f1d0:<zone>:<net>:<node> style host address
    IO Incoming only (Node can not make outgoing IPv6 calls)
    OO Outgoing only (Node can not accept incoming IPv6 calls)
    INO4 No IPv4 (Node can not accept incoming IPv4 calls)
    PO4 Prefers Out on 4 (Node can make outgoing IPv6 calls,
    but is configured to try IPv4 first)
    6DWN The IPv6 connectivity of this node is temporarely down.
    DOWN This node is temporarely down for both IPv4 and IPv6
    PM Prospective Member. The node has demonstrated IPv6
    capability but is not listed or does not advertise an
    IPv6 address in the Fidonet nodelist yet.
    *1 IPv6 address: 2001:41d0:303:69c6:f1d0:2:400:2992


    Notes:

    To make an IPv6 connection to a node connected via 6to4 tunneling
    one may have to force the mailer into IPv6 (-6 option in binkd's
    node config for binkd up to 1.1a-96, -64 option for binkd 1.1a-97
    and up). If the destination address is a 6to4 tunnel address
    (2002::/16) many OSs default to IPv4 if an IPv4 address is present.
    Submitted on day 146

    -----------------------------------------------------------------

    --- Azure/NewsPrep 3.0
    * Origin: Home of the Fidonews (2:2/2.0)
  • From FidoNews Robot@2:2/2 to All on Mon May 27 00:54:41 2019
    =================================================================
    SPECIAL INTEREST =================================================================

    Last week's statistics from the Fidoweb
    By EchoTime, 2:203/0

    (Some nets may have lost their last
    digit for technical reasons)

    pkt (toss-toss) msg (write-toss)
    nodes mean dev no mean dev no

    154/* 5.0m 4.3m 291 1.2h 5.3h 290
    201/* 1.5m 0.5m 2 16.0h 6.8h 2
    221/* 0.6m 0.4m 248 4.9h 9.4h 244
    240/* 0.2m 0.2m 12 9.9h 4.3h 10
    280/* 0.8m 2.5m 439 6.5h 10.6h 436
    292/* 2.8m 1.7m 23 1.4h 3.9h 21
    320/* 2.2m 0.9m 289 2.8h 13.2h 288
    502/* 0.6m 0.2m 7 3.3h 6.0h 7

    Sigma 2.1m 3.0m 1311 4.1h 10.2h 1298

    -----------------------------------------------------------------
    Nodelist Stats

    Input nodelist nodelist.144
    size 182.9kb
    date 2019-05-24

    The nodelist has 979 nodes in it
    and a total of 1446 non-comment entries

    including 4 zones
    31 regions
    170 hosts
    73 hubs
    admin overhead 278 ( 28.40 %)

    and 107 private nodes
    32 nodes down
    50 nodes on hold
    off line overhead 189 ( 19.31 %)


    Speed summary:

    >9600 = 58 ( 5.92 %)
    9600 = 214 ( 21.86 %)
    (HST = 8 or 3.74 %)
    (CSP = 0 or 0.00 %)
    (PEP = 0 or 0.00 %)
    (MAX = 0 or 0.00 %)
    (HAY = 0 or 0.00 %)
    (V32 = 83 or 38.79 %)
    (V32B = 27 or 12.62 %)
    (V34 = 107 or 50.00 %)
    (V42 = 83 or 38.79 %)
    (V42B = 29 or 13.55 %)
    2400 = 1 ( 0.10 %)
    1200 = 0 ( 0.00 %)
    300 = 706 ( 72.11 %)

    ISDN = 25 ( 2.55 %)

    -----------------------------------------------------
    IP Flags Protocol Number of systems -----------------------------------------------------
    IBN Binkp 747 ( 76.30 %) ----------------------------------
    IFC Raw ifcico 84 ( 8.58 %) ----------------------------------
    IFT FTP 63 ( 6.44 %) ----------------------------------
    ITN Telnet 155 ( 15.83 %) ----------------------------------
    IVM Vmodem 10 ( 1.02 %) ----------------------------------
    IP Other 5 ( 0.51 %) ----------------------------------
    INO4 IPv6 only 1 ( 0.10 %) ----------------------------------

    CrashMail capable = 829 ( 84.68 %)
    MailOnly nodes = 310 ( 31.66 %)
    Listed-only nodes = 25 ( 2.55 %)



    [Report produced by NETSTATS - A PD pgm]
    [ Revised by B Felten, 2:203/2]
    [ NetStats 3.8 2014-11-23]

    -----------------------------------------------------------------

    --- Azure/NewsPrep 3.0
    * Origin: Home of the Fidonews (2:2/2.0)
  • From Wilfred van Velzen@2:280/464 to Bjorn Felten on Mon May 27 09:31:26 2019
    Hi FidoNews,

    On 2019-05-27 00:54:41, you wrote to All:

    @CHRS: CP850 2

    Ward Dossche’s Corolary on Godwin’s Law

    Something seems wrong here...

    Bye, Wilfred.

    --- FMail-lnx64 2.1.0.18-B20170815
    * Origin: FMail development HQ (2:280/464)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Wilfred van Velzen on Mon May 27 09:41:43 2019
    Hello Wilfred,

    On Monday May 27 2019 09:31, you wrote to Bjorn Felten:

    @CHRS: CP850 2

    Ward Dosscheãs Corolary on Godwinãs Law

    Something seems wrong here...

    I noticed that as well. Our estimed Fidonews editor has patched the software to accept non-ASCII characters but he has neglected to specify the encoding for submitted articles, From what I gleen the article was submitted using CP1252 Aka Centraal-Europees Windows. The articles are published with a "CHRS 850 2" kludge.

    That's where it goes wrong.

    I suggest the editor accepts only articles encoded in UTF-8 and patches his software to use a "CHRS UTF-8 4" kludge.


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Wilfred van Velzen on Mon May 27 10:24:06 2019
    Something seems wrong here...

    Well, if in doubt, there's always the actual Fidonews issue (FNEWTA21.ZIP) to rely on.



    ..

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Mon May 27 10:27:06 2019
    MvdV> I suggest the editor accepts only articles encoded in UTF-8 and patches
    MvdV> his software to use a "CHRS UTF-8 4" kludge.

    Yeah, right. That would surely increase the number of contributions.



    ..

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Mon May 27 10:58:04 2019
    MvdV> I noticed that as well. Our estimed Fidonews editor has patched the
    MvdV> software to accept non-ASCII characters but he has neglected to specify
    MvdV> the encoding for submitted articles, From what I gleen the article was
    MvdV> submitted using CP1252 Aka Centraal-Europees Windows. The articles are
    MvdV> published with a "CHRS 850 2" kludge.

    MvdV> That's where it goes wrong.

    Oh, BTW, your analysis is totally wrong.

    There are two programs involved here. The first is MAKENEWS.EXE that I indeed patched even before I became editor -- in October 2001 to be exact. This is the program that produces the actual Fidonews. For obvious reasons there are no kludges involved here, and neither are there any in the pure text files of the submitted articles.

    The second program is the NEWSPREP program that posts the Fidonews in this and another related echo. I don't have to patch it, because I have the source code. And I did make a change in it a decade or so ago, to go for "CHRS 850 2". It was on your request, so that your copyright symbol would show properly...




    ..

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Kees van Eeten@2:280/5003.4 to Michiel van der Vlist on Mon May 27 11:00:48 2019
    Hello Michiel!

    27 May 19 09:41, you wrote to Wilfred van Velzen:

    MvdV> I suggest the editor accepts only articles encoded in UTF-8 and patches
    MvdV> his software to use a "CHRS UTF-8 4" kludge.

    No, 7 bit pure ASCII only, would be less complex.

    Kees

    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5--b20180707
    * Origin: As for me, all I know is that, I know nothing. (2:280/5003.4)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Kees van Eeten on Mon May 27 11:25:50 2019
    Hello Kees,

    On Monday May 27 2019 11:00, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> I suggest the editor accepts only articles encoded in UTF-8 and
    MvdV>> patches his software to use a "CHRS UTF-8 4" kludge.

    No, 7 bit pure ASCII only, would be less complex.

    For the ASCII only, English only community: Agreed.

    However... the editor has rebelled against the dominant ASCII only/English only culture in Fiodonet for decades and has repeatedly stated that articles in other languages are welcome. He has also been bragging that his software "has been patched for"/"is capable of" dealing with non-ASCII characters.

    Considering that these days most messages in Fiodonet are written in Cyrillic, one would expect that articles written in an encoding that covers Cyrillic are accepted.

    Also considering that the editor has been making an issue of the correct spelling of his first name for decades, one would expect that articles written in an encoding that covers the 'o' diaeresis are also accepted.

    AFAIK, the only encoding in use in Fidonet that covers both cyrillic and the 'o' diaeresis is UTF-8.


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Kees van Eeten on Mon May 27 12:16:04 2019
    No, 7 bit pure ASCII only, would be less complex.

    You can please some of the people all of the time.
    You can please all of the people some of the time.
    But you can't please all the people all of the time.

    -- Originally by poet John Lydgate,
    made famous by Abraham Lincoln.


    ..

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From mark lewis@1:3634/12.73 to Björn Felten on Mon May 27 06:11:58 2019

    On 2019 May 27 10:58:04, you wrote to Michiel van der Vlist:

    The second program is the NEWSPREP program that posts the Fidonews in
    this and another related echo. I don't have to patch it, because I
    have the source code. And I did make a change in it a decade or so
    ago, to go for "CHRS 850 2". It was on your request, so that your copyright symbol would show properly...

    apparently the character translation table is broken with regard to apostrophies...

    )\/(ark

    Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
    Do you manage your own servers? If you are not running an IDS/IPS yer doin' it wrong...
    ... 30. When you're with new friends, don't just talk about old friends.
    ---
    * Origin: (1:3634/12.73)
  • From Kees van Eeten@2:280/5003.4 to Michiel van der Vlist on Mon May 27 12:17:06 2019
    Hello Michiel!

    27 May 19 11:25, you wrote to me:

    MvdV> AFAIK, the only encoding in use in Fidonet that covers both cyrillic and
    MvdV> the 'o' diaeresis is UTF-8.

    I have the impression, that the majority that prefers Cyrrillic for their
    conversation, mainly use other encodings than UTF-8

    Those who are able to read UTF-8 encoded messages are free to do so in
    echo areas that promote that encoding.
    Publishing UTF-8 encoded messages in general areas like FIDONEWS, where
    UTF-8 readers are a minoriity, is even worse than mixing 8-bit encodings in
    one message.

    Kees

    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5--b20180707
    * Origin: As for me, all I know is that, I know nothing. (2:280/5003.4)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Björn Felten on Mon May 27 12:15:36 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    On Monday May 27 2019 10:24, you wrote to Wilfred van Velzen:

    Something seems wrong here...

    Well, if in doubt, there's always the actual Fidonews issue (FNEWTA21.ZIP) to rely on.

    That does not solve the problem.

    For starters, there is no indication in the file itself what character encoding is used.

    So one has to make some assumptions about the encoding and do some trial and error. If I select CP437/CP850, the 'o' diaeresis in your name in the header is properly displayed. If I select CP1252 the single quote characters in Wards article are correctly displayed.

    I can find no encoding that results in both being corectly displayed.


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Kees van Eeten@2:280/5003.4 to Bj÷rn Felten on Mon May 27 12:36:28 2019
    Hello Björn!

    27 May 19 12:16, you wrote to me:

    No, 7 bit pure ASCII only, would be less complex.

    You can please some of the people all of the time.
    You can please all of the people some of the time.
    But you can't please all the people all of the time.

    -- Originally by poet John Lydgate,
    made famous by Abraham Lincoln.

    There have been times, when my stance was, that if my ASR33 does not
    support it, it is out of bounds. ;)

    Others still have that stance, beit, that they converted to all Lowercase.

    Kees

    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5--b20180707
    * Origin: As for me, all I know is that, I know nothing. (2:280/5003.4)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to mark lewis on Mon May 27 12:43:34 2019
    apparently the character translation table is broken with regard to apostrophies...

    Well, there is no translation taking place at all here (only at the readers' side where applicable). But you are right, it was a handful of apostrophises that caused all this brouhaha.

    Ah well, CP 850 is the primary code page and default OEM code page in many countries, including various English-speaking locales (e.g. in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Canada).

    CP 850 differs from CP 437 (previously used in the echo postings) in that many of the box drawing characters, Greek letters, and various symbols were replaced with additional Latin letters with diacritics, thus greatly improving support for Western European languages (all characters from ISO 8859-1 are included).

    So I think I'll stick to CP 850 when posting the Fidonews in the echoes. Any objections, save from the UTF-8 fanatics?



    ..

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    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Mon May 27 13:02:35 2019
    MvdV> For starters, there is no indication in the file itself what character
    MvdV> encoding is used.

    Of course not, it's a pure text file FFS! DUH!



    ..

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    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Kees van Eeten on Mon May 27 13:04:44 2019
    Others still have that stance, beit, that they converted to all Lowercase.

    Nudge, nudge, know what I mean? <tm> Monty Python. 8-)



    ..

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Björn Felten on Mon May 27 12:31:17 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    On Monday May 27 2019 10:27, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> I suggest the editor accepts only articles encoded in UTF-8 and
    MvdV>> patches his software to use a "CHRS UTF-8 4" kludge.

    Yeah, right. That would surely increase the number of
    contributions.

    You never know until you try.

    You have rebelled againt the ASCII only/English only culture in Fidonet for decades and you have repeatedly stated that articles in other languages than English are welcome. There is a large reservoir of potential contributors east of us. Who knows what will surface if you make it possible for them to write in their own native language, using their own native character set.


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Mon May 27 13:26:31 2019
    MvdV> There is a large reservoir of potential contributors east of us. Who
    MvdV> knows what will surface if you make it possible for them to write in
    MvdV> their own native language, using their own native character set.

    Seriously? Can you see a number of Russian articles, that only the Russians can read, in an international publication like the Fidonews? In any international echo for that matter?

    AFAIK, they already have a Russian version -- just like e.g. Sweden had until our editor passed away.

    Get real!

    No, dear readers, rest assured that as long as I am the editor, the Fidonews will remain English only. Using CP850.



    ..

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    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Mon May 27 13:40:16 2019
    MvdV> you have repeatedly stated that articles in other languages than English
    MvdV> are welcome.

    (I missed this in my previous comment.)

    Repeatedly is not true. But when the zone wars ran at it's peak, I said at some point, that I was open for articles written in a non-English language just to watch the reaction.

    Alas, I don't remember if any of you who suggested this actually made such a contribution, but now that the zone wars are over and done with, there's no need for such an experiment. Now we are (almost) all one big family, speaking the same language. I still prefer e.g. 'humour' over 'humor' though, but that's just me. 8-)



    ..

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Björn Felten on Mon May 27 14:06:37 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    On Monday May 27 2019 10:58, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> I noticed that as well. Our estimed Fidonews editor has patched
    MvdV>> the software to accept non-ASCII characters but he has
    MvdV>> neglected to specify the encoding for submitted articles, From
    MvdV>> what I gleen the article was submitted using CP1252 Aka
    MvdV>> Centraal-Europees Windows. The articles are published with a
    MvdV>> "CHRS 850 2" kludge.

    MvdV>> That's where it goes wrong.

    Oh, BTW, your analysis is totally wrong.

    "Totally"? As in EVERYTHING I mentioned is wrong?

    There are two programs involved here.

    I mentioned "software". That can mean more than one program.

    The first is MAKENEWS.EXE that I indeed patched even before I became editor -- in October 2001 to be exact.

    So the part of my analysis that mentioned you patched software is correct.

    This is the program that produces the actual Fidonews. For obvious
    reasons there are no kludges involved here, and neither are there any
    in the pure text files of the submitted articles.

    Of course. That does not alter the fact that you neglected to specify in which encoding these "pure text files" should be submitted. Neither artspec.doc not the trailer in the snooze itself makes any mention of it. So that part of my analysis is also correct.

    The second program is the NEWSPREP program that posts the Fidonews
    in this and another related echo. I don't have to patch it, because I
    have the source code.

    So you may claim that part of my analysis is incomplete.

    And I did make a change in it a decade or so ago, to go for "CHRS 850
    2".

    And so the part of my analysis that stated the message in the echo displayed a "CHRS CP850 2" kludge is aldso correct.

    Are you disputing my part of the analysis that Ward's article was encoded in CP1252?

    Your claim that my analysis is "totally wrong" is wrong. The most you can say it that it is incomplete on one point.

    It was on your request, so that your copyright symbol would show properly...

    Be that as it may be, that does not make my analysis incorrect. I may indeed have made a request to that effect in the distant past. I am still not too old to adapt and gain new insight. If I made such a request I hereby withdraw it and make a plea for UTF-8.


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Kees van Eeten on Mon May 27 14:29:44 2019
    Hello Kees,

    On Monday May 27 2019 12:17, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> AFAIK, the only encoding in use in Fidonet that covers both
    MvdV>> cyrillic and the 'o' diaeresis is UTF-8.

    I have the impression, that the majority that prefers Cyrrillic for
    their conversation, mainly use other encodings than UTF-8

    I think your impression is correct. In the echos where Russian or Ukranian is the dominant language, CP866 is the default character encoding. For files they often use KOI8-r.

    Those who are able to read UTF-8 encoded messages are free to do so in echo areas that promote that encoding. Publishing UTF-8 encoded
    messages in general areas like FIDONEWS, where UTF-8 readers are a minoriity, is even worse than mixing 8-bit encodings in one message.

    That is a matter of opinion. As a techie I would say that mixing 8 bit encodings in one and the same message or in one and the same file is technically incorrect and therefore "worse".


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Mon May 27 14:56:03 2019
    MvdV> "Totally"? As in EVERYTHING I mentioned is wrong?

    No, as in you used the wrong assumption (that everything was produced by the same program), which in turn led you to a lot of erroneous conclusions. Ending with:

    "That's where it goes wrong."




    ..

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  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Kees van Eeten on Mon May 27 14:35:31 2019
    Hello Kees,

    On Monday May 27 2019 12:36, you wrote to Bj”rn Felten:

    There have been times, when my stance was, that if my ASR33 does not
    support it, it is out of bounds. ;)

    Once. in a previous millennium I had the same attitude regarding Baudot code. Which is even more Spartanic than upper case ASCII.

    Others still have that stance, beit, that they converted to all Lowercase.

    Baudot code has only one case. Most machines using Baudot code display lower case.

    Morse code also has just one case. But unlike Baudot code, it is extendible and while in its orginal form it just had 26 letters, the digits 0-9 and a handfull special chaacters, later codes for accented and umlauted characters were added. The latest addition is .--.-. (@)


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Björn Felten on Mon May 27 14:55:16 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    On Monday May 27 2019 13:02, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> For starters, there is no indication in the file itself what
    MvdV>> character encoding is used.

    Of course not, it's a pure text file FFS! DUH!

    So how does:

    Well, if in doubt, there's always the actual Fidonews issue (FNEWTA21.ZIP) to rely on.

    help?


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Mon May 27 15:16:34 2019
    MvdV> So how does:

    Well, if in doubt, there's always the actual Fidonews issue
    (FNEWTA21.ZIP) to rely on.

    MvdV> help?

    Help whom? You? Obviously not at all. Someone desperate to see Ward's apostrophises properly displayed, a wee bit I think.



    ..

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  • From Kees van Eeten@2:280/5003.4 to Michiel van der Vlist on Mon May 27 14:52:06 2019
    Hello Michiel!

    27 May 19 14:29, you wrote to me:

    Those who are able to read UTF-8 encoded messages are free to do so in
    echo areas that promote that encoding. Publishing UTF-8 encoded
    messages in general areas like FIDONEWS, where UTF-8 readers are a
    minoriity, is even worse than mixing 8-bit encodings in one message.

    MvdV> That is a matter of opinion. As a techie I would say that mixing 8 bit
    MvdV> encodings in one and the same message or in one and the same file is
    MvdV> technically incorrect and therefore "worse".

    As a reader of messages, where my replacement system is not configured to
    the diverse World of encodings used, messages with messed up umlauted
    characters, are more readable, then UTF-8 encoded messages with a rich use
    of two byte characters.

    But by the time I get smapinntp and Thunderbird as well as my python reader
    properly installed, I will be OK again when I am nosy.

    Butt still, it are all kludges, that are far from the Holy Grail.

    Promoting UTF-8, where there are only poor kludges, is just as usefull as
    complaining that Fidonet has to modernize. It will not produce the
    software, that is needed. Toning down your expectations and writing
    example implementations brings far more.


    Kees

    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5--b20180707
    * Origin: As for me, all I know is that, I know nothing. (2:280/5003.4)
  • From Kees van Eeten@2:280/5003.4 to Michiel van der Vlist on Mon May 27 15:23:12 2019
    Hello Michiel!

    27 May 19 14:35, you wrote to me:

    MvdV> Baudot code has only one case. Most machines using Baudot code display
    MvdV> lower case.

    It is some time ago, but in my memory all messages in the TELEX system were
    presented in Uppercase

    MvdV> Morse code also has just one case. But unlike Baudot code, it is
    MvdV> extendible and while in its orginal form it just had 26 letters, the
    MvdV> digits 0-9 and a handfull special chaacters, later codes for accented
    MvdV> and umlauted characters were added. The latest addition is .--.-. (@)

    The use of Morse is not practical in binary fixed word systems. It was
    born in a time, where bandwith was a liniting factor. Most computer
    encodings were born where memory/storage was a limiting factor.

    Extendible systems have administrative overhead.

    Kees

    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5--b20180707
    * Origin: As for me, all I know is that, I know nothing. (2:280/5003.4)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Kees van Eeten on Mon May 27 15:51:19 2019
    It is some time ago, but in my memory all messages in the TELEX system were presented in Uppercase

    That however was totally dependant on the presentation layer. All telex machines that I have owned and operated did in fact write upper case symbols, but there may very well have been other machines that did not want their machines to shout at their readers. :)





    ..

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  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Kees van Eeten on Mon May 27 15:46:31 2019
    Hello Kees,

    On Monday May 27 2019 15:23, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> Morse code also has just one case. But unlike Baudot code, it
    MvdV>> is extendible and while in its orginal form it just had 26
    MvdV>> letters, the digits 0-9 and a handfull special chaacters, later
    MvdV>> codes for accented and umlauted characters were added. The
    MvdV>> latest addition is .--.-. (@)

    The use of Morse is not practical in binary fixed word systems.

    I was not advocating to use Morse code in Fidonet. Just presenting some background information.

    It was born in a time, where bandwith was a liniting factor. Most
    computer encodings were born where memory/storage was a limiting
    factor.

    It was born in a time when the only storage available was a human writing things down on a piece of paper end on/off was the only encoding available. "bandwith" was not an issue, the term was not even in use when Morse code was born. The early spark transmitters were ver wide band accoding to moden standards...

    Extendible systems have administrative overhead.

    UTF-8 is extendible...


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Ward Dossche@2:292/854 to Kees van Eeten on Mon May 27 16:05:27 2019
    Keesm

    MvdV> Baudot code has only one case. Most machines using Baudot code
    MvdV> display lower case.

    It is some time ago, but in my memory all messages in the TELEX system
    were presented in Uppercase

    You are confusing TELEGRAM with TELEX.

    Telegrams were printed in upper-case. Telex always has been lower-case.

    \%/@rd

    --- D'Bridge 3.99
    * Origin: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards (2:292/854)
  • From Kees van Eeten@2:280/5003.4 to Bj÷rn Felten on Mon May 27 16:26:28 2019
    Hello Björn!

    27 May 19 15:51, you wrote to me:

    It is some time ago, but in my memory all messages in the TELEX
    system were presented in Uppercase

    That however was totally dependant on the presentation layer. All
    telex
    machines that I have owned and operated did in fact write upper case symbols, but there may very well have been other machines that did not want their machines to shout at their readers. :)

    Well shouting was deminished by the poor quality of the copy, the person who
    had to take action, got.

    The project I did, started with a box, that was connected to a telex line,
    that box converter the message to ASCII RS232. or directly into EBCDIC and
    delivered at a virtual reader in VM/CMS. The messages were in IATA format with
    some additions to denile recipients.

    My software adapted the messages to PROFS and decided, wich PROFS users
    should receive the Telex messages.

    There was also a part that worked the otherway around. I.e from PROFS to
    telex. It was quite fun to build, especially as the addressing information
    of incominf telexes was typed by humans and delivery should be fail safe.

    Ofcourse the system became useless, when real e-mail became available.

    The project had a desissive influence on the work I did during the following
    years.

    Kees

    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5--b20180707
    * Origin: As for me, all I know is that, I know nothing. (2:280/5003.4)
  • From Kees van Eeten@2:280/5003.4 to Michiel van der Vlist on Mon May 27 16:36:16 2019
    Hello Michiel!

    27 May 19 15:46, you wrote to me:

    MvdV> It was born in a time when the only storage available was a human
    MvdV> writing things down on a piece of paper end on/off was the only encoding
    MvdV> available. "bandwith" was not an issue, the term was not even in use
    MvdV> when Morse code was born. The early spark transmitters were ver wide
    MvdV> band accoding to moden standards...

    OK, you win I was thinking of the bitrate.

    Extendible systems have administrative overhead.

    MvdV> UTF-8 is extendible...

    Yes, there are administrative bits, that indicate the byte size.

    You will probably tell me it is a sparse table, where leading groups of
    8 zero's are redundant and omitted.

    Kees

    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5--b20180707
    * Origin: As for me, all I know is that, I know nothing. (2:280/5003.4)
  • From Kees van Eeten@2:280/5003.4 to Ward Dossche on Mon May 27 16:45:18 2019
    Hello Ward!

    27 May 19 16:05, you wrote to me:

    It is some time ago, but in my memory all messages in the TELEX system
    were presented in Uppercase

    You are confusing TELEGRAM with TELEX.

    Telegrams were printed in upper-case. Telex always has been lower-case.

    You may be right, I have no examples laying around anymore.

    Kees

    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5--b20180707
    * Origin: As for me, all I know is that, I know nothing. (2:280/5003.4)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Kees van Eeten on Mon May 27 17:05:29 2019
    Telegrams were printed in upper-case. Telex always has been lower-case.

    You may be right, I have no examples laying around anymore.

    I still have rolls upon rolls of old telexes somewhere around here. All in upper case. I have never seen a lower case telex. Maybe it was special to Sweden...?

    In various movies (e.g. Good Morning Vietnam) and TV shows depicting the time, telex printouts always seem to be upper case, so maybe it was special to the US as well?



    ..

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  • From Paul Quinn@3:640/1384 to Ward Dossche on Tue May 28 00:37:23 2019
    Hi! Ward,

    On 27 May 19 16:05, you wrote to Kees van Eeten:

    It is some time ago, but in my memory all messages in the TELEX
    system were presented in Uppercase

    You are confusing TELEGRAM with TELEX.

    I think you are.

    Telegrams were printed in upper-case. Telex always has been
    lower-case.

    I think you are momentarily confused. I worked in an environment that used TELEX comms as an art form for 24 years, and they were all in uppercase. I can produce a .jpg copy of the NASA farewell telex to the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking mob as evidence.

    Cheers,
    Paul.

    ... Objects in taglines are closer than they appear.
    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20130515
    * Origin: Quinn's Rock - Live from Paul's Xubuntu desktop! (3:640/1384)
  • From Ward Dossche@2:292/854 to Paul Quinn on Mon May 27 21:31:54 2019
    Paul,

    Telegrams were printed in upper-case. Telex always has been
    lower-case.

    I think you are momentarily confused. I worked in an environment that
    used TELEX comms as an art form for 24 years, ...

    I worked for a few decades in an environment which actually ran the service, ran the exchanges, commercialized the teletypes and whatever.

    And I can send you jpg-s that I have.

    I am not excluding there were other switched non-public networks with teletype devices, but when you use the word "telex" then we are talking about the public switched network run by incumbent national operators following ITU-guidelines.

    You think not?

    \%/@rd

    --- D'Bridge 3.99
    * Origin: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards (2:292/854)
  • From Paul Quinn@2:250/1 to Ward Dossche on Tue May 28 08:44:58 2019
    Hi! Ward,

    On 05/27/2019 09:31 PM, you wrote:

    You think not?

    I'm thinking we each have differing personal experiences. I'm out.

    Cheers,
    Paul.

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.4.0
    * Origin: Gotta go... the orderlies are about to check my room!
  • From David Drummond@3:640/305 to Björn Felten on Tue May 28 13:43:51 2019
    On 28/05/2019 01:05, 2:203/2 wrote:
    Telegrams were printed in upper-case. Telex always has been
    lower-case.

    You may be right, I have no examples laying around anymore.

    I still have rolls upon rolls of old telexes somewhere around here. All in upper case. I have never seen a lower case telex. Maybe it was special to Sweden...?

    In various movies (e.g. Good Morning Vietnam) and TV shows depicting the time, telex printouts always seem to be upper case, so maybe it was special to the US as well?

    They were in upper case in New Zealand too, at least between '69 and '80 when I worked with the carrier there.

    --

    Gang warily
    David

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.8.0
    * Origin: Bucca, Qld, Australia (3:640/305)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Björn Felten on Tue May 28 10:54:39 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    On Monday May 27 2019 12:43, you wrote to mark lewis:

    But you are right, it was a handful of apostrophises that caused all
    this brouhaha.

    "Brouhaha"?

    As opposed to the two decades of brouhaha that you have raised over two dots over the letter 'o'?

    Ah well, CP 850 is the primary code page and default OEM code page
    in many countries,

    For DOS. Many Winodows applications default to CP1252 AKA "Windows Western". AKA "ANSI Latin 1" and my guess is that is exactly what happened with Ward's article. CP 1252 has three different characters that look like the ASCII apostrophe character "'". (0X27). In CP1252 there is also the leading single quote character (0X91) and the closing single quote character (0X92).

    My guess is that Ward used a "smart" Windows editor that translated the apostrophe character into the closing single quote character. (0X92) Most likely this was unintentional and he was unaware of it.

    Actually CP1252 is not such a bad choice. (For those in the western world that want to stick to single byte encoding.) Except for the characters in the range 0X80-0x9F it is the same as Latin-1 which is popular with the Linux gang. In Latin 1 0X80-0X9F are control characters, in CP1252 they are printable character. With among them the EURO sign. Very nice for the Euro lovers. (Yeah, I know, you are not one of them).

    https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows-1252

    So I think I'll stick to CP 850 when posting the Fidonews in the echoes. Any objections, save from the UTF-8 fanatics?

    It would seem I am disqualified from objecting. So let me add this:

    If CP850 is the "Fidonews character set", you should mention this in an updated version of ARTSPEC.DOS and in the Fidonews epilog.

    Also you should have rejected Ward's article as it is not in CP850. You recently stated that processing of articles is not automatic, so don't give us that excuse. You claim you actually do "editing". So you should have noticed the deviation and "edited" it.


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Ward Dossche@2:292/854 to Michiel van der Vlist on Tue May 28 12:59:56 2019

    My guess is that Ward used a "smart" Windows editor that translated the apostrophe character into the closing single quote character. (0X92)
    Most likely this was unintentional and he was unaware of it.

    Correct.

    \%/@rd

    --- D'Bridge 3.99
    * Origin: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards (2:292/854)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Tue May 28 13:08:03 2019
    MvdV> "Brouhaha"?

    MvdV> As opposed to the two decades of brouhaha that you have raised over two
    MvdV> dots over the letter 'o'?

    Can you verify that? All I've ever said is that I appreciate the effort it takes to get my name correctly spelled in some countries -- and I highly respect those that do.

    Ah well, CP 850 is the primary code page and default OEM code page
    in many countries,

    MvdV> For DOS.

    In case you didn't know it, Fidonet is and has always been a DOS based network. All you have to do is look at all the eight bit structures of all our definitions. Ever since we got 16-bit and then 32 and now 64-bit systems, I've been fighting with stuff like big vs. little endians and similar, I happen to know.





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  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Tue May 28 13:47:12 2019
    MvdV> You claim you actually do "editing". So you should have noticed the
    MvdV> deviation and "edited" it.

    Of course I should have. But when it comes to contributions from some of the major ones, I tend to just take a short glance at it. It usually is perfectly done so I trust it to be perfect as usual.

    Just as I missed your automated contribution, in the midst of one new every week, not so long ago, where in an ideal world, I should have noticed the longer than 70 chars/line error.

    I'm just a human being, performing a job without pay (and very little appreciation) for soon to be 20 years. If you want a perfect editor on the job, you probably have to pay up big time. In the meantime you'll have to accept a total catastrophe like the one with a few miscoded apostrophises.



    ..

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  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Björn Felten on Tue May 28 14:11:26 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    On Tuesday May 28 2019 13:47, you wrote to me:

    I'm just a human being, performing a job without pay (and very
    little appreciation) for soon to be 20 years. If you want a perfect
    editor on the job, you probably have to pay up big time. In the
    meantime you'll have to accept a total catastrophe like the one with a
    few miscoded apostrophises.

    Of course. As a human and unpaid volunteer you are entitled to a fair share of errors. And yes, shit happens. And indeed, two miscoded apostrophes are no big deal.

    What rushed against my feathers is that your Pavlov reflex was to go in denial mode and start shooting at the messenger by declaring my technical analysis as "totally wrong", where in fact is was 95% spot on.

    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Tue May 28 15:00:48 2019
    MvdV> What rushed against my feathers is that your Pavlov reflex was to go in
    MvdV> denial mode and start shooting at the messenger by declaring my
    MvdV> technical analysis as "totally wrong", where in fact is was 95% spot on.

    As a scientist I'm very much dedicated to the GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) principle in any form of analysis.

    If you use the GI (i.e. the assumption that it was one and the same program that "failed") in your analysis, my "Pavlov reflex" made me classify the outcome as 100% GO.

    To one of my students from yesteryears I would have said "do again, do right".



    ..

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  • From Dan Clough@1:123/115 to Björn Felten on Tue May 28 07:43:00 2019
    Bj”rn Felten wrote to Michiel van der Vlist <=-

    MvdV> You claim you actually do "editing". So you should have
    MvdV> noticed the deviation and "edited" it.

    Of course I should have. But when it comes to contributions
    from some of the major ones, I tend to just take a short glance
    at it. It usually is perfectly done so I trust it to be perfect
    as usual.

    So you just ASSumed that it was correct. Usually a mistake.

    Just as I missed your automated contribution, in the midst of
    one new every week, not so long ago, where in an ideal world, I
    should have noticed the longer than 70 chars/line error.

    Seems like long line(s) would have been quite obvious.

    I'm just a human being, performing a job without pay (and very
    little appreciation) for soon to be 20 years. If you want a
    perfect editor on the job, you probably have to pay up big time.
    In the meantime you'll have to accept a total catastrophe like
    the one with a few miscoded apostrophises.

    But are you really "editing" anything? Or do you just do a couple
    of clicks on your Windows system and various utilities/scripts
    cobble together what passes for the FidoNews? No real human
    interaction required.



    ... Nothing is so smiple that it can't get screwed up.
    === MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    --- SBBSecho 3.07-Linux
    * Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (1:123/115)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Dan Clough on Tue May 28 15:13:09 2019
    But are you really "editing" anything?

    Have you ever made a contribution, or are you just happy standing there in the Peanut Gallery complaining?

    If you had, you would know...


    ..

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  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Dan Clough on Tue May 28 15:10:36 2019
    Hello Dan,

    On Tuesday May 28 2019 07:43, you wrote to Bj”rn Felten:

    Just as I missed your automated contribution, in the midst of
    one new every week, not so long ago, where in an ideal world, I
    should have noticed the longer than 70 chars/line error.

    Seems like long line(s) would have been quite obvious.

    It is not. If it were obvious *I* would have noticed it myself when editing the table that was part of the submission. While I still wonder why in this day and age Bj”rn's softwae is so harsh and dumb that it totally rejects an article if a single line exceeds 70 characters, instead of dealing with it in a more intelligent and relaxed way, I fully accept that the error was mine. And so I have taken steps to make sure it does not happen again.


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Tue May 28 15:50:15 2019
    MvdV> it totally rejects an article

    It does not! That's simply not true.

    Every submitted article is included as the original file in the INPU*.* files found on the fidonews.eu as well as the eljaco.se sites. No matter if it violated the archaic MAKENEWS rules or not.

    Those file has also, since about 15 years ago, been distributed in the file echo SNOOZE for the benefit of originally the producer of the fidonews.org echo, but also in order to facilitate other projects like that.

    Alas, this is what I got for trying to assist in making the Fidonews available in various different forms...



    ..

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Henri Derksen@2:280/1208 to Björn Felten on Tue May 28 02:30:00 2019
    Hello Bjorn,

    MvdV>> I suggest the editor accepts only articles encoded in UTF-8 and
    MvdV>> patches his software to use a "CHRS UTF-8 4" kludge.

    Yeah, right. That would surely increase the number of contributions.

    At my UniCorn BBS Dos 5 machine CP437 is used,
    and at my RISC OS 5.23 ip system, Raspberry Pi 1B2 with !ROSBink,
    characterset ISO Latin 8859-1,
    same as at my !WimpLink Point 1 system, RiscPC, at the Acorn RISC PC.
    UTF8 is only possible here when I will start using my Raspberry Pi with Raspbian Stretch Linux and Husky software. I donot know when ready.
    At this moment I donot like the UTF 8 circus.
    So if contributing FidoNews is restricted to UTF8 only,
    it will sure decrease your input.

    Henri.

    ---
    * Origin: Computing Apart Together (2:280/1208)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Björn Felten on Tue May 28 23:00:48 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    On Tuesday May 28 2019 13:08, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> As opposed to the two decades of brouhaha that you have raised
    MvdV>> over two dots over the letter 'o'?

    Can you verify that? All I've ever said is that I appreciate the
    effort it takes to get my name correctly spelled in some countries --
    and I highly respect those that do.

    But you won't retuen the favour.

    Ah well, CP 850 is the primary code page and default OEM code
    page in many countries,

    MvdV>> For DOS.

    In case you didn't know it, Fidonet is and has always been a DOS
    based network.

    Not any more. Systen running on pure DOS are the rare exceptions these days. The vast majority runs on Windows or Linux. A minority on OS/2.

    All you have to do is look at all the eight bit structures of all our definitions. Ever since we got 16-bit

    You may have forgotten, but Fidonet started on 16 bit systems. AFAIK no Fidonet mailer ever ran on an 8 bit system.

    FWIW I once considered writing a Fidonet mailer for my 8 bit 6808 Flex system. The show stopper was that ARC was a bridge too far for it.

    and then 32 and now 64-bit systems, I've been fighting with stuff like
    big vs. little endians and similar, I happen to know.

    Your point?


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Björn Felten on Tue May 28 23:12:12 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    On Tuesday May 28 2019 15:00, you wrote to me:

    If you use the GI (i.e. the assumption that it was one and the same program that "failed") in your analysis, my "Pavlov reflex" made me classify the outcome as 100% GO.

    I made no such assumption.


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Björn Felten on Tue May 28 23:16:01 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    On Tuesday May 28 2019 15:50, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> it totally rejects an article

    It does not! That's simply not true.

    Hmmm... Not so long ago you referred to the file distributed in the file echo as the "final authority", The article was missing in the file...

    Every submitted article is included as the original file in the
    INPU*.* files found on the fidonews.eu as well as the eljaco.se sites.
    No matter if it violated the archaic MAKENEWS rules or not.

    The article was rejected for inclusion in the file and the echo.

    OK, OK, I will make the following correction:

    It totally rejects an article from the version in the file distribution ands the version as published in the echo.

    Happy now?

    Those file has also, since about 15 years ago, been distributed in
    the file echo SNOOZE for the benefit of originally the producer of the fidonews.org echo, but also in order to facilitate other projects like that.

    Note that I also added that the error was mine amnd that I had taken steps to prevent it from happening again.

    Alas, this is what I got for trying to assist in making the
    Fidonews available in various different forms...

    No, this is what you get for acting like an asshole that has to turn everything into a pissing contest. Next time make sure you have your back turned into the wind.


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Henri Derksen on Tue May 28 23:36:13 2019
    Hello Henri,

    On Tuesday May 28 2019 02:30, you wrote to Bj”rn Felten:

    At this moment I donot like the UTF 8 circus.

    Well, I don't like the Tower of Bable circus with Code Pages. So what we have in common is that we have something we do not like.

    So if contributing FidoNews is restricted to UTF8 only, it will sure decrease your input.

    So simple submit your contribution in ASCII only. ASCII is a subset of UTF-8, so it will be accepted.

    Just help me refresh my memory: how many article did you submit so far?


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Björn Felten on Wed May 29 09:32:42 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    On Monday May 27 2019 13:26, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> There is a large reservoir of potential contributors east of
    MvdV>> us. Who knows what will surface if you make it possible for
    MvdV>> them to write in their own native language, using their own
    MvdV>> native character set.

    Seriously? Can you see a number of Russian articles,

    You never know until you try.

    that only the Russians can read,

    Widen your horizon. You'd be surpised how many outside Russia can read Russian. And BTW, the use of Cyrillic is not limited to Russian. There are Cyrillic letters on the Euro bills. (FYI the Euro is the international currency used in most countries of the European Union.)

    in an international publication like the Fidonews? In any
    international echo for that matter?

    I wonder what your definition of "international" is. In my vocabulary it is something that crosses one or more borders. The high speed train from Amsterdam to Brussels is an international train. Crossing just one border makes it international.

    Another relevant notion is "global". Fidonet is a global network. It is not limited to some specific group of countries. Is Fidonews global? If it is English only, I'd say it is not global.

    AFAIK, they already have a Russian version -- just like e.g. Sweden
    had until our editor passed away.

    In the 90ties there was a Dutch version as well. "Nederlands Net Nieuws". It died when the number of readers and writers dropped below critical mass just before the turn of the century.

    AFAIK, there is a Z1 version too. "Fido Gazette" IIRC.

    Your point?

    Get real!

    I assure you I am a real human being. I am not a robot.

    No, dear readers, rest assured that as long as I am the editor, the Fidonews will remain English only. Using CP850.

    For decades you have been campaigning against the ASCII only rules in Fidonet. And rightly so. ASCII only was justified in the very early days when the hardware simply could not support more. But those days are long gone. There is no longer a technical reason for any ASCII only rule. So you can have your name spelled properly with an ” (o diaeresis) instead of just an o. Kudos fo you.

    But now you show your true colours. Now that you got /your/ name properly spelled, you stop. You want to replace the ASCII only rule by a CP850 only rule. There is no technical justification fo any CP850 ony rule.

    Shame on you!


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Björn Felten on Wed May 29 10:29:09 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    On Monday May 27 2019 13:40, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> you have repeatedly stated that articles in other languages
    MvdV>> than English are welcome.

    (I missed this in my previous comment.)

    Repeatedly is not true.

    IIRC it was more than once.

    But when the zone wars ran at it's peak, I said at some point, that I
    was open for articles written in a non-English language just to watch
    the reaction.

    Alas, I don't remember if any of you who suggested this actually made
    such a contribution,

    I submitted at least one article in Dutch and it was accepted. (and it got us some flack from "across")

    So now you are telling met that you enticed me to throw oil on the fire of the zone war instead of just demonstrating that Fidonews need not be limited to English?

    but now that the zone wars are over and done with,

    Are you sure? Not so long ago we all thought the cold war was over. Now with megolomanic leaders in both the White House and the Kremlin, we know better. :(

    there's no need for such an experiment. Now we are (almost) all one
    big family, speaking the same language.

    "All speaking the same language"? You really live in a bubble. The assumption that everyone in Fidonet speaks English is simply wrong. In the haydays of Fdionet with 1200 Dutch nodes and 5500 registered Dutch points, there were many participants that never ventured into the so called "international" areas because their English was not good enough for that. From the few diehards that now remain in R28, nearly all of them probably speak English, but I would not be surprised if in Germany there is still a significant fraction of paticipants that have not enough English skills to participate in English echos. Same for Latin America. The ZC4 does not speak English... And then there is Eastern Europe...

    No, we may be one big family, or at least I'd would like it to be, but the assertion that we all speak the same language is plain wrong.

    I still prefer e.g. 'humour' over 'humor' though, but that's just me.
    8-)

    No, not just you. I too prefer "the Queens's English" despite the fact that I am not a royalist.

    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Ward Dossche@2:292/854 to Michiel van der Vlist on Wed May 29 11:13:47 2019
    Michiel,

    From the few diehards that now remain in R28, nearly all of
    them probably speak English, but I would not be surprised if in Germany there is still a significant fraction of paticipants that have not enough English skills to participate in English echos. Same for Latin America.
    The ZC4 does not speak English... And then there is Eastern Europe...

    Plus, as you have pointed-out before, there is a difference between knowing a language as a native speaker and as a non-native speaker, a lot gets lost in translation sometimes. For example english-language jokes ... or when you carefully disect how David Rance expresses himself.

    \%/@rd

    --- D'Bridge 3.99
    * Origin: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards (2:292/854)
  • From Paul Quinn@3:640/1384 to Ward Dossche on Wed May 29 20:52:32 2019
    Hi! Ward,

    On 29 May 19 11:13, you wrote to Michiel van der Vlist:

    jokes ... or when you carefully disect how David Rance expresses
    himself.

    Or when FLAK is mispelled. Or, was he really 'channelling' Roberta? Mmm.

    Cheers,
    Paul.

    ... Operator, trace this call and tell me where I am.
    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20130515
    * Origin: Quinn's Rock - Live from Paul's Xubuntu desktop! (3:640/1384)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Wed May 29 14:10:26 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    MvdV>>> AFAIK, the only encoding in use in Fidonet that covers both
    MvdV>>> cyrillic and the 'o' diaeresis is UTF-8.

    I have the impression, that the majority that prefers Cyrrillic for
    their conversation, mainly use other encodings than UTF-8

    MvdV> I think your impression is correct. In the echos where Russian or Ukranian
    MvdV> is the dominant language, CP866 is the default character encoding. For
    MvdV> files they often use KOI8-r.

    CP866 is preferred by most Russians, but is not the only character
    set that can be used for cyrillic. There are also many other peoples
    who write with a cyrillic character set, so it is not exclusive.

    Those who are able to read UTF-8 encoded messages are free to do so in
    echo areas that promote that encoding. Publishing UTF-8 encoded
    messages in general areas like FIDONEWS, where UTF-8 readers are a
    minoriity, is even worse than mixing 8-bit encodings in one message.

    MvdV> That is a matter of opinion. As a techie I would say that mixing 8 bit
    MvdV> encodings in one and the same message or in one and the same file is
    MvdV> technically incorrect and therefore "worse".

    Could be. But when the original message is written with the
    same character set all should be well and good.

    --Lee

    --
    I Take A Sheet In The Pool

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Wed May 29 14:10:32 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    There have been times, when my stance was, that if my ASR33 does not
    support it, it is out of bounds. ;)

    MvdV> Once. in a previous millennium I had the same attitude regarding Baudot
    MvdV> code. Which is even more Spartanic than upper case ASCII.

    It had to be, given the medium.

    Others still have that stance, beit, that they converted to all
    Lowercase.

    MvdV> Baudot code has only one case. Most machines using Baudot code display lower
    MvdV> case.

    The Baudot code is still common in the European telex system,
    which is why uppercase letters are allowed in the international
    telex network. That does not mean that lowercase letters
    cannot or should not be used. But it does make things a whole
    lot more practical.

    MvdV> Morse code also has just one case.

    Can you imagine exchanging messages in FidoNet using morse code
    rather than uppercase and lowercase letters in regular language?

    MvdV> But unlike Baudot code, it is extendible and while in its orginal form it
    MvdV> just had 26 letters, the digits 0-9 and a handfull special chaacters, later
    MvdV> codes for accented and umlauted characters were added. The latest addition
    MvdV> is .--.-. (@)

    For writing echomail it would be impractical.

    --Lee

    --
    Every Bottom Needs A Top

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Björn Felten on Wed May 29 14:10:37 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    It is some time ago, but in my memory all messages in the TELEX
    system were presented in Uppercase

    That however was totally dependant on the presentation layer. All telex machines that I have owned and operated did in fact write upper case symbols, but there may very well have been other machines that did not
    want
    their machines to shout at their readers. :)

    The Baudot code is 5-digit code.
    64 possible character codes minus 2 shift characters.
    If both uppercase and lowercase were used, then it would
    take 52 possible digits - just enough to do the alphabet.

    5-digit numbers represent the same letters and numbers
    in the telex system.

    Since the Baudot code is still in common use in European
    telex systems, only uppercase letters are allowed in the
    international telex network.

    Which leads to ISO 646.

    I know, I know. What in blaze's hell ...

    ISO 7-bit coded character set.
    First edition in 1967.
    Specified 7-bit character code (ISO/IEC 646).

    Which brings you to -

    CP866 (under DOS to write cyrillic script)

    Telex only allows uppercase.

    --Lee

    --
    Erections, That's Our Game

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Björn Felten on Wed May 29 14:10:42 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    Telegrams were printed in upper-case. Telex always has been
    lower-case.

    You may be right, I have no examples laying around anymore.

    I still have rolls upon rolls of old telexes somewhere around here. All
    in
    upper case. I have never seen a lower case telex. Maybe it was special to Sweden...?

    The Baudot code is still common in the European telex system, which
    is why only uppercase letters are allowed in the international telex
    system. However, that does not preclude telex systems outside the international telex system from using lowercase letters.

    In various movies (e.g. Good Morning Vietnam) and TV shows depicting the time, telex printouts always seem to be upper case, so maybe it was
    special
    to the US as well?

    Telex printouts have always been uppercase in newspapers and radio
    in the US. Hollywood may be different, where anything goes.

    --Lee

    --
    Our Nuts, Your Mouth

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Kees van Eeten on Wed May 29 14:10:47 2019
    Hello Kees,

    It is some time ago, but in my memory all messages in the TELEX system
    were presented in Uppercase

    You are confusing TELEGRAM with TELEX.

    Telegrams were printed in upper-case. Telex always has been lower-case.

    You may be right, I have no examples laying around anymore.

    Telex still comes in uppercase.

    If you have doubts, just visit your local newspaper.
    Or university (communications department).

    --Lee

    --
    Get Her Wet Here

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Paul Quinn on Wed May 29 14:10:52 2019
    Hello Paul,

    It is some time ago, but in my memory all messages in the TELEX
    system were presented in Uppercase

    You are confusing TELEGRAM with TELEX.

    I think you are.

    Although using uppercase in telegram is a matter of style, using
    uppercase in telex is a must in the international telex network.

    Telegrams were printed in upper-case. Telex always has been
    lower-case.

    I think you are momentarily confused.

    Telegrams were printed in uppercase due to style and tradition.
    Telex can be lowercase, but must be uppercase in the international
    telex network.

    I worked in an environment that used TELEX comms as an art form for 24 years, and they were all in uppercase.

    The Baudot code is still common in European telex systems, which
    is why only uppercase letters are allowed in the international telex
    network.

    I can produce a .jpg copy of the NASA farewell telex to the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking mob as evidence.

    Reporters and journalists from around the world also read
    it in uppercase, not just scientists and engineers ...

    --Lee

    --
    Nobody Beats Our Meat

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Ward Dossche on Wed May 29 14:10:57 2019
    Hello Ward,

    Telegrams were printed in upper-case. Telex always has been
    lower-case.

    I think you are momentarily confused. I worked in an environment that
    used TELEX comms as an art form for 24 years, ...

    I worked for a few decades in an environment which actually ran the
    service,
    ran the exchanges, commercialized the teletypes and whatever.

    And I can send you jpg-s that I have.

    I am not excluding there were other switched non-public networks with teletype devices, but when you use the word "telex" then we are talking about the public switched network run by incumbent national operators following ITU-guidelines.

    You think not?

    I know not.

    Telex is 5-digit code.
    62 possible character codes minus 2 shift characters.
    This is known as the Baudot code.
    Still commonly used in the European telex system.
    Which is why only *uppercase* letters are allowed
    in the international telex network.

    Oh, I love it when the former president of Greenpeace is busted. :)

    --Lee (I still have my press credentials)

    --
    Often Licked, Never Beaten

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Björn Felten on Wed May 29 14:11:17 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    MvdV>> I noticed that as well. Our estimed Fidonews editor has patched the
    MvdV>> software to accept non-ASCII characters but he has neglected to
    specify
    MvdV>> the encoding for submitted articles, From what I gleen the article
    was
    MvdV>> submitted using CP1252 Aka Centraal-Europees Windows. The articles
    are
    MvdV>> published with a "CHRS 850 2" kludge.

    MvdV>> That's where it goes wrong.

    Oh, BTW, your analysis is totally wrong.

    Is it?

    There are two programs involved here. The first is MAKENEWS.EXE that I indeed patched even before I became editor -- in October 2001 to be
    exact.

    Frank Vest was editor at the time.

    This is the program that produces the actual Fidonews.

    Which had been in use for some time.

    For obvious reasons there are no kludges involved here, and neither are there any in the pure text files of the submitted articles.

    Nobody saw a real need, so nothing was done to update the file.

    The second program is the NEWSPREP program that posts the Fidonews in
    this
    and another related echo. I don't have to patch it, because I have the source code.

    With these two files the FidoNews can be published in its current
    form. What is the problem publishing articles written in cyrillic?

    And I did make a change in it a decade or so ago, to go for "CHRS 850 2".
    It
    was on your request, so that your copyright symbol would show properly...

    How inclusive should the FidoNews be? Should the FidoNews look
    backward, by resorting to "7 bit pure ASCII only"? Or forward, to
    include anything and everything under the sun?

    The world speaks many languages. Not English only.

    --Lee

    --
    As Good As It Looks

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Björn Felten on Wed May 29 14:11:22 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    MvdV>> I suggest the editor accepts only articles encoded in UTF-8 and
    MvdV>> patches his software to use a "CHRS UTF-8 4" kludge.

    Yeah, right. That would surely increase the number of contributions.

    The only condition now is for individuals to write articles
    encoded in UTF-8, regardless of language? If so, then how long
    will it take all those articles written in cyrillic to arrive
    in Sweden? I hear cybertravel is really fast ...

    --Lee

    --
    Stop Workin', Start Jerkin'

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Björn Felten on Wed May 29 14:11:27 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    No, 7 bit pure ASCII only, would be less complex.

    You can please some of the people all of the time.
    You can please all of the people some of the time.
    But you can't please all the people all of the time.

    -- Originally by poet John Lydgate,
    made famous by Abraham Lincoln.

    "Donald Trump is the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln!"
    ~ Jon Voigt, actor (and father of Angelie Jolie)

    --Lee

    --
    Nobody Beats Our Meat

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Kees van Eeten on Wed May 29 14:11:32 2019
    Hello Kees,

    MvdV>> I suggest the editor accepts only articles encoded in UTF-8 and
    patches
    MvdV>> his software to use a "CHRS UTF-8 4" kludge.

    No, 7 bit pure ASCII only, would be less complex.

    That would make Donald Trump happy.
    Even though he can't write.

    --Lee

    --
    It Ain't Payday If It Ain't Nuts In Your Mouth

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Wed May 29 14:11:37 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    MvdV>>> I suggest the editor accepts only articles encoded in UTF-8 and
    MvdV>>> patches his software to use a "CHRS UTF-8 4" kludge.

    No, 7 bit pure ASCII only, would be less complex.

    MvdV> For the ASCII only, English only community: Agreed.

    The editor has taken a step much farther, by insisting
    on English-only. Even though his native language is Swedish.
    IOW, the editor of the FidoNews has gone totally MAGA.

    MvdV> However... the editor has rebelled against the dominant ASCII only/English
    MvdV> only culture in Fiodonet for decades and has repeatedly stated that
    MvdV> articles in other languages are welcome. He has also been bragging that his
    MvdV> software "has been patched for"/"is capable of" dealing with non-ASCII
    MvdV> characters.

    Only because the editor wants everybody to spell is "”" correctly.

    MvdV> Considering that these days most messages in Fiodonet are written in
    MvdV> Cyrillic, one would expect that articles written in an encoding that covers
    MvdV> Cyrillic are accepted.

    I have a very dated e-reader that correctly displays cyrillic.
    I can even use it to write in cyrillic. The software is as primitive
    as the device. And to think I can do all this in text format.

    MvdV> Also considering that the editor has been making an issue of the correct
    MvdV> spelling of his first name for decades, one would expect that articles
    MvdV> written in an encoding that covers the 'o' diaeresis are also accepted.

    Since the editor has no problem with those who spell his name
    correctly, our Russian friends should have no problem telling their
    own stories in their own native tongue.

    MvdV> AFAIK, the only encoding in use in Fidonet that covers both cyrillic and the
    MvdV> 'o' diaeresis is UTF-8.

    There you have it. The editor has no choice, as he is out of excuses.

    --Lee

    --
    Get Her Wet Here

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Björn Felten on Wed May 29 14:11:42 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    MvdV>> you have repeatedly stated that articles in other languages than
    MvdV>> English are welcome.

    (I missed this in my previous comment.)

    Repeatedly is not true. But when the zone wars ran at it's peak, I said
    at
    some point, that I was open for articles written in a non-English
    language
    just to watch the reaction.

    There are no zone wars. There never were, if you think about it.
    Just one sysop gone amuk. Totally harmless. And still welcome to
    continue participating in FidoNet.

    Alas, I don't remember if any of you who suggested this actually made
    such a
    contribution,

    Michiel van der Vlist and Ward Dossche both contributed articles,
    in their own language of choice. I had thought about doing the same,
    and should have.

    but now that the zone wars are over and done with,

    There are no zone wars, and never were.

    there's no need for such an experiment.

    Individuals are free to contribute articles in the language of their
    own choice. Your job as editor does not include censorship.

    Now we are (almost) all one big family, speaking the same language.

    My native language is Cajun French. In kindergarten I had no
    choice but to communicate in Cajun French, as the teacher and my
    classmates also only spoke Cajun French. You would have been
    totally lost had you been there, the only kindergartner speaking
    Swedish.

    I still prefer e.g. 'humour' over 'humor' though, but that's just me.
    8-)

    You are truly blessed The Orange One cannot write.

    --Lee

    --
    We're Great In Bed

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Björn Felten on Wed May 29 14:11:47 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    MvdV>> There is a large reservoir of potential contributors east of us. Who
    MvdV>> knows what will surface if you make it possible for them to write in
    MvdV>> their own native language, using their own native character set.

    Seriously? Can you see a number of Russian articles, that only the
    Russians
    can read, in an international publication like the Fidonews? In any international echo for that matter?

    Why would that be a problem?

    AFAIK, they already have a Russian version -- just like e.g. Sweden had until our editor passed away.

    Limiting FidoNet to English only is a problem that needs
    correcting. Same as limiting FidoNet to Swedish only would be.
    Or any other language. So why keep doing the same stupid thing?

    Get real!

    The US has no official language. In Louisiana, I can insist on
    using French as my native tongue in court of law, including to sign
    legal documents. Why would an editor of the FidoNews want to limit
    articles to be written in English? Or for contributors in this
    echo to limit their rantings in English? Certainly that makes no
    sense. No sense at all.

    No, dear readers, rest assured that as long as I am the editor, the
    Fidonews
    will remain English only. Using CP850.

    The editor of the FidoNews has gone MAGA ...

    --Lee

    --
    As Good As It Looks

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Wed May 29 14:11:52 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    MvdV>>> I suggest the editor accepts only articles encoded in UTF-8 and
    MvdV>>> patches his software to use a "CHRS UTF-8 4" kludge.

    Yeah, right. That would surely increase the number of
    contributions.

    MvdV> You never know until you try.

    The e-reader I prefer to use has no problem displaying text
    in multiple formats, in several languages, including Russian.
    The software is primitive, with no bells and whistles. Not
    only can I read texts, but I can also write in my language
    of choice (of those supported by the e-reader).

    If the editor claims he is not able or willing to publish
    anything written in cyrillic, I suggest this community hires
    an associate editor who will.

    MvdV> You have rebelled againt the ASCII only/English only culture in Fidonet for
    MvdV> decades and you have repeatedly stated that articles in other languages
    MvdV> than English are welcome.

    Articles written in languages other than English have been
    published in the FidoNews. And do give credit to previous
    editors, such as Frank Vest, who also were willing to do
    the same.

    MvdV> There is a large reservoir of potential contributors east of us.

    Learning cyrillic is one thing, but mandarin is quite another.

    MvdV> Who knows what will surface if you make it possible for them to write in
    MvdV> their own native language, using their own native character set.

    The land of the rising sun has its own special character set ...

    --Lee

    --
    Get Her Wet Here

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Wed May 29 14:11:58 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    MvdV>>> AFAIK, the only encoding in use in Fidonet that covers both
    MvdV>>> cyrillic and the 'o' diaeresis is UTF-8.

    I have the impression, that the majority that prefers Cyrrillic for
    their conversation, mainly use other encodings than UTF-8

    MvdV> I think your impression is correct. In the echos where Russian or Ukranian
    MvdV> is the dominant language, CP866 is the default character encoding. For
    MvdV> files they often use KOI8-r.

    For articles published in the FidoNews that is not the problem.
    It is the editor's refusal to allow articles not in English.
    Although he has made exceptions, such as some written in Dutch.

    Those who are able to read UTF-8 encoded messages are free to do so in
    echo areas that promote that encoding. Publishing UTF-8 encoded
    messages in general areas like FIDONEWS, where UTF-8 readers are a
    minoriity, is even worse than mixing 8-bit encodings in one message.

    MvdV> That is a matter of opinion. As a techie I would say that mixing 8 bit
    MvdV> encodings in one and the same message or in one and the same file is
    MvdV> technically incorrect and therefore "worse".

    The editor's aversion to 7-bit rather than 8-bit is understandable,
    as he is neither an Englishman nor an American. But then, the same
    can be said of most FidoNetters. So why the insistence on English
    only?

    The US does not have an official language. Why should FidoNet?

    Just because a small handful of English-speaking people from the
    US started FidoNet does not mean that everybody else has to follow
    suit.

    In Louisiana, French-speaking people were the first to arrive.
    Aside from the natives who were already there. Today, the majority
    of the population in Louisiana speaks English, with very few who
    speak Cajun French. And even fewer who speak native tongues.

    The editor of the FidoNews should reconsider his position.

    If not, this community should resort to the alternative -

    This community should hire an associate editor who is willing
    and capable of taking on the responsibilities of handling non-English
    articles.

    Once this has been accomplished, then it will be up to the writers
    to give the newly-hired associate editor something to do. With all
    languages welcome.

    --Lee

    --
    Stop Workin', Start Jerkin'

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Ward Dossche@2:292/854 to Paul Quinn on Wed May 29 14:58:59 2019

    Paul,

    jokes ... or when you carefully disect how David Rance expresses
    himself.

    Or when FLAK is mispelled. Or, was he really 'channelling' Roberta?
    Mmm.

    Roberta Flack, the singer, or Roberta Flak ... that SS woman ?

    \%/@rd

    --- D'Bridge 3.99
    * Origin: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards (2:292/854)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Lee Lofaso on Wed May 29 14:43:23 2019
    Hello Lee,

    On Wednesday May 29 2019 14:10, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> Baudot code has only one case. Most machines using Baudot code
    MvdV>> display lower case.

    The Baudot code is still common in the European telex system,

    The European telex system is history. In The Netherlands the plug was pulled in 2007.


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Paul Quinn@3:640/1384 to Lee Lofaso on Wed May 29 22:46:27 2019
    Hi! Lee,

    On 29 May 19 14:10, you wrote to me:

    You are confusing TELEGRAM with TELEX.
    I think you are.

    Although using uppercase in telegram is a matter of style, using
    uppercase in telex is a must in the international telex network.

    I'm starting to think there may have been different ITU-Ts at various times past, or different ITU-Ts for each as-yet-unformed-Fidonet zone. I've looked at some guidelines that uncle Google recommended (about six until I gave up), and all the 'letter case' rules and examples are in uppercase ASCII.

    Cheers,
    Paul.

    ... Knock firmly but softly. I like soft firm knockers.
    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20130515
    * Origin: Quinn's Rock - Live from Paul's Xubuntu desktop! (3:640/1384)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Björn Felten on Wed May 29 18:18:02 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    MvdV>> What rushed against my feathers is that your Pavlov reflex was to
    go in
    MvdV>> denial mode and start shooting at the messenger by declaring my
    MvdV>> technical analysis as "totally wrong", where in fact is was 95%
    spot on.

    As a scientist I'm very much dedicated to the GIGO (Garbage In,
    Garbage
    Out) principle in any form of analysis.

    If you use the GI (i.e. the assumption that it was one and the same program that "failed") in your analysis, my "Pavlov reflex" made me classify the outcome as 100% GO.

    To one of my students from yesteryears I would have said "do again,
    do
    right".

    Chuck Mangione had a saying to all musicians aspiring to perform
    in public - "Play it right."

    No explanation needed for musicians to get the point.

    There is one exception.

    A band I once heard at a casino that was so bad I wish i could
    forget the band's name. Had their own groupies that would follow
    them wherever they performed. I asked people at the casino what
    they thought of the band. Everybody said the band was "horrible"
    and "terrible" and other words that cannot be said in public.

    This horrible band was so bad it had somehow managed to find gigs
    every weekend at various places in the region. I made sure I never
    went to see them anywhere they performed in public on purpose.

    One day I was at a book fair where old books and stuff is sold
    for cheap. Really cheap. And there, on a table of records and
    cd's, was a new recording of this band. I forget what I paid
    for it, but it was less than a dollar.

    Boot Leg Joe.

    If ever you find a bar owner in Sweden who wants to hire the
    worst band in the civilized world, tell him/her to call them up.

    --Lee

    --
    Every Bottom Needs A Top

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Ward Dossche on Wed May 29 18:38:27 2019
    Hello Ward,

    jokes ... or when you carefully disect how David Rance expresses
    himself.

    Or when FLAK is mispelled. Or, was he really 'channelling' Roberta?
    Mmm.

    Roberta Flack, the singer, or Roberta Flak ... that SS woman ?

    Muscles.

    --Lee

    --
    Laying Pipe Since '88

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Wed May 29 18:38:33 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    MvdV>>> Baudot code has only one case. Most machines using Baudot code
    MvdV>>> display lower case.

    The Baudot code is still common in the European telex system,

    MvdV> The European telex system is history. In The Netherlands the plug was pulled
    MvdV> in 2007.

    My days in radio and newspapers were in the 1970s and 80s.
    Gosh. I'm getting old ...

    --Lee

    --
    I Take A Sheet In The Pool

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Paul Quinn on Wed May 29 18:38:42 2019
    Hello Paul,

    You are confusing TELEGRAM with TELEX.
    I think you are.

    Although using uppercase in telegram is a matter of style, using
    uppercase in telex is a must in the international telex network.

    I'm starting to think there may have been different ITU-Ts at various
    times
    past, or different ITU-Ts for each as-yet-unformed-Fidonet zone. I've looked at some guidelines that uncle Google recommended (about six until gave up), and all the 'letter case' rules and examples are in uppercase ASCII.

    Now I know why Marconi typed all his code in uppercase.

    --Lee

    --
    We Put Big Loads In Tight Places

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From BOB ACKLEY@1:123/140 to BJÆ’RN FELTEN on Wed May 29 16:26:26 2019
    It is some time ago, but in my memory all messages in the
    TELEX system
    were presented in Uppercase

    That however was totally dependant on the presentation layer. All
    telex
    machines that I have owned and operated did in fact write upper case
    symbols,
    but there may very well have been other machines that did not want
    their
    machines to shout at their readers. :)

    I learned to type on a TeleType Model 28, it used a 5 bit character set
    called the 'Baudot code.' Caps only, the 'upper case' characters were
    the numbers 0-9, punctuation marks and special characters. I presume
    that the TeleType Model 28 and the 'Telex' you refer to are analogous
    --- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
    * Origin: Fido Since 1991 | QWK by Web | BBS.FIDOSYSOP.ORG (1:123/140)
  • From BOB ACKLEY@1:123/140 to BJÆ’RN FELTEN on Wed May 29 16:28:38 2019
    Telegrams were printed in upper-case. Telex always has been
    lower-case.

    You may be right, I have no examples laying around anymore.

    I still have rolls upon rolls of old telexes somewhere around
    here. All in
    upper case. I have never seen a lower case telex. Maybe it was
    special to
    Sweden...?

    In various movies (e.g. Good Morning Vietnam) and TV shows
    depicting the
    time, telex printouts always seem to be upper case, so maybe it was
    special to
    the US as well?

    There was also some pretty good drawing done with Teletype characters. Somewhere around my place I have a picture of John F Kennedy rendered
    by a Model 28 Teletype - and the paper tape that printed the picture
    --- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
    * Origin: Fido Since 1991 | QWK by Web | BBS.FIDOSYSOP.ORG (1:123/140)
  • From Paul Quinn@3:640/1384 to Ward Dossche on Thu May 30 09:05:36 2019
    Hi! Ward,

    On 29 May 19 14:58, you wrote to me:

    jokes ... or when you carefully disect how David Rance
    expresses himself.

    Or when FLAK is mispelled. Or, was he really 'channelling'
    Roberta? Mmm.

    Roberta Flack, the singer, or Roberta Flak ... that SS woman ?

    Frankly, my dear fellow, I don't give a damn for either.

    Cheers,
    Paul.

    ... Magic Elmer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arkda5FtbcI
    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20130515
    * Origin: Quinn's Rock - Live from Paul's Xubuntu desktop! (3:640/1384)
  • From David Drummond@3:640/305 to Lee Lofaso on Thu May 30 10:59:52 2019
    On 29/05/2019 22:11, 2:203/2 wrote:

    AFAIK, they already have a Russian version -- just like e.g. Sweden had
    until our editor passed away.

    Limiting FidoNet to English only is a problem that needs
    correcting. Same as limiting FidoNet to Swedish only would be.
    Or any other language. So why keep doing the same stupid thing?

    If you were the editor of the Snooze, how would you edit an article I submitted written in Maori (supposing that I could include all of the character accents)? Are you fluent enough in that written language to edit it?

    Would you do any better if it was written in Ukrainian?

    --

    Gang warily
    David

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.8.0
    * Origin: Bucca, Qld, Australia (3:640/305)
  • From Henri Derksen@2:280/1208 to Michiel van der Vlist on Wed May 29 22:53:00 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    Ah well, CP 850 is the primary code page and default OEM code
    page in many countries,

    MvdV>>> For DOS.

    In case you didn't know it, Fidonet is and has always been a DOS
    based network.

    MvdV> Not any more.
    MvdV> Systen running on pure DOS are the rare exceptions these days.

    Mine for instance ;-).

    MvdV> The vast majority runs on Windows or Linux. A minority on OS/2.

    All you have to do is look at all the eight bit structures of all our
    definitions. Ever since we got 16-bit

    MvdV> You may have forgotten, but Fidonet started on 16 bit systems. AFAIK no MvdV> Fidonet mailer ever ran on an 8 bit system.

    That is not completely sure.
    Some guys of our othernet AcoNet wrote FTN BBCscan software for the 8 bit
    Acorn BBC B computers to communicatie with FidoNet systems.
    That was at the end of the 80's start of the 90's.

    MvdV> FWIW I once considered writing a Fidonet mailer for my 8 bit 6808 Flex MvdV> system. The show stopper was that ARC was a bridge too far for it.

    We had a ARC routine for the Acorn BBC B.
    Ask Simon Voortman about it.

    and then 32 and now 64-bit systems, I've been fighting with stuff like BF>> big vs. little endians and similar, I happen to know.

    I have heard that terms before, and I neither understood it.

    Henri.

    ---
    * Origin: Computing Apart Together (2:280/1208)
  • From Henri Derksen@2:280/1208 to Michiel van der Vlist on Wed May 29 22:55:00 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    At this moment I donot like the UTF 8 circus.

    MvdV> Well, I don't like the Tower of Bable circus with Code Pages.

    Me neither.
    The complex use of apostrophes etc is only a way to distinguish from other languages, and nothing more.

    Mvdv> So what we have in common is that we have something we do not like.

    Yes because not al my systems can display all kinds of code pages.
    I have at least 3 different ones.
    First I have the UniCorn BBS system at Dos 5 with CP437
    Second I have all the RISC OS machines (RiscPC's, Pi's) using Latin 1.
    And third the Raspbian Stretch Linux at several other Raspberry Pi's.
    The last one can both Latin 1 and UTF8 If I am right.
    When I collect some text from a website, I can only save that textfile
    If I choose UTF8. Whith the Default Latin 1 the saving gives an error,
    and won't save the textfile at all ;-(.

    So if contributing FidoNews is restricted to UTF8 only, it will sure
    decrease your input.

    MvdV> So simple submit your contribution in ASCII only. ASCII is a subset of MvdV> UTF-8, so it will be accepted.

    Ok, thanks for the explanation.

    MvdV> Just help me refresh my memory: how many article did you submit so far?

    Sorry, but that is zero.
    All others have found out and written what I wanted to know.
    I donot have new idea's, nowbody else had.
    Ofcourse I sometimes read interesting articles, from you for instance.
    So in this case I did not have input for so far.
    Besides that, I am also busy with other volunteer work and have to organise my energy for several projects properly as a multi handicapped person, you know. My time is not so much as other normal healthy people, from the same age,
    or even much older ones have more energy than me.
    But you never know if I once see an opportuinity to create input.
    If there is still a FidoNews letter, I will then contribute it.

    Henri.

    ---
    * Origin: Computing Apart Together (2:280/1208)
  • From Henri Derksen@2:280/1208 to Michiel van der Vlist on Wed May 29 23:00:00 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    MvdV> "All speaking the same language"? You really live in a bubble. The
    MvdV> assumption that everyone in Fidonet speaks English is simply wrong. In MvdV> the haydays of Fdionet with 1200 Dutch nodes and 5500 registered Dutch MvdV> points, there were many participants that never ventured into the so MvdV> called "international" areas because their English was not good enough MvdV> for that. From the few diehards that now remain in R28, nearly all of MvdV> them probably speak English, but I would not be surprised if in Germany MvdV> there is still a significant fraction of paticipants that have not
    MvdV> enough English skills to participate in English echos. Same for Latin MvdV> America. The ZC4 does not speak English... And then there is Eastern MvdV> Europe...

    You forget France.
    Until not so long ago, many French people did not speak English,
    and only some German, i.e. a long side the German border.
    The other bad situation was and still is in the Fench part of Belgium.
    Even if they understand Dutch, i.e. besides the border,
    they almost allways answer in French,
    that is a kind of "tick" between their ears ;-(.
    When still keeping doing that, it will kill good nabourship.
    Of course they can speak Dutch, but they allways try French first,
    even if you ask somthing in Dutch or Englisch.
    I call that "stronteigenwijs".
    In the long term they are the loosers, and we go elswhere.
    Mostly the Dutch will try to participate, but there is a lmit in doing so.
    And that French speaking Belgians are trying that to the limit,
    especially the old ones.
    The English part on French websites is very small compared to the original French part of it, which I hardly understand.
    You know for (very) hard of hearing people like me, learning foreign
    languages is more than a double handicap.
    In that case I am a little jalous at the EU man Frans Timmermans who speaks
    at least 7 languages if I am right.
    The Germans are much better in speaking and writing English I have remarked.
    In the long term the Englisch speaking part will grow much in more countries. When you ask information about the right route on roads in Amsterdam
    you have 50 % chance to get an answer in Englisch, I was supprised too some years back. Now I know it, I am prepared.

    MvdV> No, we may be one big family, or at least I'd would like it to be, but MvdV> the assertion that we all speak the same language is plain wrong.

    That may be, but someone at the TV has explained why in the long run the differences in languages will go away.
    You already see it at universities here in The Netherlands.
    Many studies are only available in Englisch, not even in Dutch any more.
    Even for the Master Study of Dutch, there is a significant declining in students. Some weeks ago someone warned us for that.
    The same will happen in Friesland in future.
    Learning a local language only a small part speaks, is a kind of waste of energy. In the same time you could study Englisch, German, Spanisch or French to widen your horizon. You do the same to commnucate with many Russians.
    There are also Russians who write perfectly Englisch, even if it is not
    their native language.

    I still prefer e.g. 'humour' over 'humor' though, but that's just me.
    8-)

    MvdV> No, not just you. I too prefer "the Queens's English"

    Yes me too like much more UK Englisch, than the USA version.
    The same goes for Germany, I like much more "Hoch Deutch" in stead of all the other local versions.
    Why? Because your radius is much higher, i.e. more people will understand you. And sure my Englisch is not perfect, the same for my German.
    Unluckily I did not have the energy to studt French, I know only a little words taken in 3 years at school. I only did axamination in Dutch Englisch and German. Of course Dutch was the best, Englisch second and German third.

    MvdV> despite the fact that I am not a royalist.

    That's a different story.

    O, and besides; I live in The Netherlands, not in Holland.
    I donot like Dutch firms writing Holland on their truck,
    even if they resides in one of the other provinces.
    Holland is only the north and south side of the west of NL as you know.
    You donot live in Holland either, and as for me it is the same ;-).
    So let us all write The Netherlands in stead of Holland.
    Good luck.

    Henri.

    ---
    * Origin: Computing Apart Together (2:280/1208)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Henri Derksen on Thu May 30 07:14:44 2019
    MvdV>> You may have forgotten, but Fidonet started on 16 bit systems.
    MvdV>> AFAIK no Fidonet mailer ever ran on an 8 bit system.

    That is not completely sure.

    Of course it isn't.

    If it was, no mailer did ever run on an original IBM PC, but I seem to recall that it was quite a popular computer in the early Fidonet years (mine included).

    And I've patched quite a few abandonware FTN programs in my days using the 8-bit DOS program DEBUG.COM to know for sure.

    ..

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Henri Derksen on Thu May 30 09:17:41 2019
    Hello Henri,

    On Wednesday May 29 2019 22:53, you wrote to me:

    In case you didn't know it, Fidonet is and has always been a DOS
    based network.

    MvdV>> Not any more.
    MvdV>> Systen running on pure DOS are the rare exceptions these days.

    Mine for instance ;-).

    Wrong tense. Your DOS FrontDoor system /was/ one of the rare exceptions. It is no longer operational. It may have been the last of the Mohikans. ;-)

    MvdV>> AFAIK no Fidonet mailer ever ran on an 8 bit system.

    That is not completely sure.

    Note the "AFAIK".

    Some guys of our othernet AcoNet wrote FTN BBCscan software for the 8
    bit Acorn BBC B computers to communicatie with FidoNet systems.

    I too wrote software for my 8 bit Flex system to "communicate with Fidonet systems". I could use it to read and write messages posted on BBS's participating in Fidonet. But it was not a Fidonet mailer. It could not do FTS-1.

    That was at the end of the 80's start of the 90's.

    If that Acorn BBS system was really a Fidonet system, what was its node number and in which period was it in the Fidonet nodelist?

    and then 32 and now 64-bit systems, I've been fighting with stuff
    like big vs. little endians and similar, I happen to know.

    I have heard that terms before, and I neither understood it.

    Then I will refrain from trying to explain, it is not relevant for the discussion at hand. It was just a smoke screen.


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Henri Derksen on Thu May 30 09:29:45 2019
    Hello Henri,

    On Wednesday May 29 2019 23:00, you wrote to me:

    Hello Michiel,

    MvdV>> "All speaking the same language"? You really live in a bubble.
    MvdV>> The assumption that everyone in Fidonet speaks English is simply
    MvdV>> wrong.

    [..]

    You forget France.

    We were discussing the "Family of Fidonet". Tha last French node left Fidonet ages ago. Same for Wallonia. Nol longer present in Fidonet. Alas.

    MvdV>> No, we may be one big family, or at least I'd would like it to
    MvdV>> be, but the assertion that we all speak the same language is
    MvdV>> plain wrong.

    That may be, but someone at the TV has explained why in the long run
    the differences in languages will go away.

    "Someone at the TV"... Someone on TV said it, so it must be true? Oh, c'mon..

    You already see it at universities here in The Netherlands. Many
    studies are only available in Englisch, not even in Dutch any more.

    Be that as it may be. The Dutch language won't go away juat like that. And neither will Frisian, Suid Afrikaans or any of the hundreds of languages that are native to less than 25 million people.

    We are a VERY long way from one world language and if it ever comes to that, it may not or even probably will not be English.

    Even for the Master Study of Dutch, there is a significant declining
    in students. Some weeks ago someone warned us for that. The same will happen in Friesland in future. Learning a local language only a small
    part speaks, is a kind of waste of energy.

    I agree. Here in Fidonet I am often told: "if we had not... You would be speaking German|Russian." I doubt that is true, but even if it were, they did not do me a favour. I am not at all happy to be saddled with a native language that is understood by at best 1% of the world population and spoken by even less. But that is how it is. The twor of Bable is not going away in mt lifetime.

    In the same time you could study Englisch, German, Spanisch or French
    to widen your horizon. You do the same to commnucate with many
    Russians. There are also Russians who write perfectly Englisch, even
    if it is not their native language.

    Yes, there are those. But they are a minority.


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Henri Derksen on Thu May 30 10:01:43 2019
    Hello Henri,

    On Wednesday May 29 2019 22:55, you wrote to me:

    At this moment I donot like the UTF 8 circus.

    "Onbekend maakt onbemind".

    The complex use of apostrophes etc is only a way to distinguish from
    other languages, and nothing more.

    While in some languagas the use of accents, umlauts, tremas and other diacritics may be purely cosmetic in some cases, in others they are essential to properly convey the meaning or indicate the pronunciation.

    In Dutch the accents and tremas are essential. "Een" and "‚‚n" mean different things. "Roel" and "Ro‰l" are not the same person.

    And than of course there are languages with a completely different alfabet, Greek and Russian come to mind.

    Bj”rn is right. The 26 letters of the ASCII character set are not enough to properly express oneself in writing. Even for the Brittish it is not enough . No pound sign 'œ' in ASCII...

    Mvdv>> So what we have in common is that we have something we do not
    Mvdv>> like.

    Yes because not al my systems can display all kinds of code pages.

    The early computers were a step back. My first typewriter had no problems with accents and tremas. It even had a key for the Dutch concatenatd 'ij'. My first computer was Upper case ASCII only. But computers have evolved. Now my computer can do much more than that typewriter.

    I have at least 3 different ones.

    First I have the UniCorn BBS system at Dos 5 with CP437

    My memory may fail me, but IIRC even DOS 5 had the CHCP command to switch code pages. It came with at least a dozen. CP850 and CP866 included. For DOS there was also CYRILLIC.COM.

    Second I have all the RISC OS machines (RiscPC's, Pi's) using Latin 1.

    An exotic OS that may or may not support UTF-8 and/or IPv6 in future ...

    And third the Raspbian Stretch Linux at several other Raspberry Pi's.
    The last one can both Latin 1 and UTF8 If I am right.

    So it does UTF-8...

    When I collect some text from a website, I can only save that textfile
    If I choose UTF8. Whith the Default Latin 1 the saving gives an error,
    and won't save the textfile at all ;-(.

    Almost all websites are UTF-8 these days. So of course you will hve problems with saving it in Latin-1. Adapt or be left behind...

    So if contributing FidoNews is restricted to UTF8 only, it will
    sure decrease your input.

    MvdV>> So simple submit your contribution in ASCII only. ASCII is a
    MvdV>> subset of UTF-8, so it will be accepted.

    Ok, thanks for the explanation.

    Always glad to be of help.

    MvdV>> Just help me refresh my memory: how many article did you submit
    MvdV>> so far?

    Sorry, but that is zero.

    In that case I think you should display a bit of modesty when venting opinions about what may or may not hold people back from submitting articles.

    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Paul Quinn on Thu May 30 20:01:14 2019
    Hello Paul,

    jokes ... or when you carefully disect how David Rance
    expresses himself.

    Or when FLAK is mispelled. Or, was he really 'channelling'
    Roberta? Mmm.

    Roberta Flack, the singer, or Roberta Flak ... that SS woman ?

    Frankly, my dear fellow, I don't give a damn for either.

    How many kids did Scarlett O'Hara have?

    --Lee

    --
    Change Is Cumming

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to David Drummond on Thu May 30 20:01:20 2019
    Hello David,

    AFAIK, they already have a Russian version -- just like e.g. BF>Sweden
    had until our editor passed away.

    Limiting FidoNet to English only is a problem that needs
    correcting. Same as limiting FidoNet to Swedish only would be.
    Or any other language. So why keep doing the same stupid thing?

    If you were the editor of the Snooze, how would you edit an article I submitted written in Maori (supposing that I could include all of the character accents)?

    Very carefully.

    Are you fluent enough in that written language to edit it?

    That's what associate editors are for.

    Would you do any better if it was written in Ukrainian?

    Never underestimate the competence of associate editors ...

    --Lee

    --
    Your Hole Is Our Goal

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Henri Derksen@2:280/1208 to Michiel van der Vlist on Thu May 30 16:06:00 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    At this moment I donot like the UTF 8 circus.

    MvdV> "Onbekend maakt onbemind".

    That's not the problem, but that it does not work at my favorite machine,
    and every so x-time changing machines and OS, also take much energy not everyone has. So I do that as less as possible.

    The complex use of apostrophes etc is only a way to distinguish from
    other languages, and nothing more.

    MvdV> While in some languagas the use of accents, umlauts, tremas and other MvdV> diacritics may be purely cosmetic in some cases, in others they are
    MvdV> essential to properly convey the meaning or indicate the pronunciation.

    MvdV> In Dutch the accents and tremas are essential.

    You can often read that from the context, so accents not always necessarry. Many people use them in the wrong way too, or do not use them at all.

    MvdV> "Een" and "‚‚n" mean different things.

    You can write e'e'n in stead, no special apostrophes needed ;-).

    MvdV> "Roel" and "Ro‰l" are not the same person.

    You can write Ro"el, no special apostrophes needed ;-).
    At the basis school I learned that the trema means a split before the character
    it is placed on. So Ro"el is correct and Roe"l is wrong.
    Other point is the points on the i with a trema.
    There should be three of them not two,
    because the letter i already has one of its own.
    The trema is an extra 2 points, so in total 3.
    A good typewriter does this write well, i.e. which all the three points.
    That's why I am allways talking about the Point(s) on the i ;-).
    The Duth "y with dots are mostly spelled as two characters "ij" the same for other miltiple vowels in words. No need for a single character ij.
    In Germany they do the same by placing a letter e behind vowels with an Umlaut,
    nothing wrong with that.

    MvdV> And than of course there are languages with a completely different
    MvdV> alfabet, Greek and Russian come to mind.

    That is a far from my bed show, I have not the energy for to learn.
    In that way I had much respect of an old computerfriend who studied Thai characters and made much effort in it at his Acorn RiscPC and IyonixPC
    while he was above 70 years old. The reason whas his daughter in law.
    He died last year at 80, I still mis him, as I knew him for more than 30 years and also travelled together to England and Mortsel.BE several times.
    He was also one of my last Points.

    MvdV> Bj”rn is right. The 26 letters of the ASCII character set are not enough MvdV> to properly express oneself in writing. Even for the Brittish it is not MvdV> enough . No pound sign 'œ' in ASCII...

    You can write UKP for it, no special sign needed ;-).

    Mvdv>>> So what we have in common is that we have something we do not like. HD>> Yes because not al my systems can display all kinds of code pages.
    MvdV> The early computers were a step back.

    Yes.

    MvdV> My first typewriter had no problems with accents and tremas.

    Mine the same.

    MvdV> It even had a key for the Dutch concatenatd 'ij'.

    I have never learned about that special character at schools.
    I think it was something from before the 1960 ties.
    We all learned to write it in two characters, the same as "ei", "oe", "ui" etc.
    Many years after high school I heard about that special "y.

    MvdV> My first computer was Upper case ASCII only.

    My computer life started much better with the Acorn BBC in 1984,
    one of the top home computers at that time.
    Even the Mini's at work in 1980 (DataPoint55) had both upper and lowercase.
    In 1983 I studied witch CP/M machines like the Exidy Sorcerer.

    MvdV> But computers have evolved.

    Yes, not every one will follow, we have here someone only writing in lc.
    That's a choice others should also respect.

    MvdV> Now my computer can do much more than that typewriter.

    Yes, mines too.

    I have at least 3 different ones.

    First I have the UniCorn BBS system at Dos 5 with CP437

    MvdV> My memory may fail me, but IIRC even DOS 5 had the CHCP command to
    MvdV> switch code pages.

    I am aware of that.

    MvdV> It came with at least a dozen. CP850 and CP866 included.

    In the fido software you could choose for one at a time only.
    Changing after every message was and still is almost undoable.
    For the next message you had to leave all the programs, than change codepage, en then start all programs up again, to see it in the correct way.
    And after that you have to change it back again.
    So I choosed for CP437 as the most messages with graphics around text were written in that alphabet.
    But originally writing in High ASCII was forbidden, but many (new) writers still did it ;-(.
    After some time I stopped complaining and press the next key if it is unreadable here.
    At my RISC OS Point 1 system I can change between IBM CP437, Latin 1 and also all kind of rotated alphabeths from wich ROT13 is the best one known.

    MvdV> For DOS there was also CYRILLIC.COM.

    Even a far from my bed show I have not the energy for.

    Second I have all the RISC OS machines (RiscPC's, Pi's) using Latin 1.

    MvdV> An exotic OS that may or may not support UTF-8 and/or IPv6 in future ...

    We'll see. It is much more userfriendly than Windows which all its geeks.
    More is not allways better.
    Many phones now use ARM hardware too.
    When the cleaning up proces is more ready here, I go invest in new play tools like a better Linux laptop and may be a smartphone too.
    The Raspberry Pi 3B+ whith Raspbian Stretch Linux is a nice machine,
    but to light for daily office work. For FidoNet it will do.
    I often have to go to the library here to show YouTube films at their Win7 machines, and to print some letters. Since my last printer a Lexmark OC45 got defect, I do not invest in inktjet printers anymore.

    And third the Raspbian Stretch Linux at several other Raspberry Pi's.
    The last one can both Latin 1 and UTF8 If I am right.

    MvdV> So it does UTF-8...

    yes.

    When I collect some text from a website, I can only save that textfile HD>> If I choose UTF8. Whith the Default Latin 1 the saving gives an error, HD>> and won't save the textfile at all ;-(.

    MvdV> Almost all websites are UTF-8 these days. So of course you will hve
    MvdV> problems with saving it in Latin-1. Adapt or be left behind...

    I had no choice, en luckily I can read that saved UTF8 text's at my Latin 1 RiscPC from an USB stick.

    Greetings from Henri.

    ---
    * Origin: Computing Apart Together (2:280/1208)
  • From Henri Derksen@2:280/1208 to Michiel van der Vlist on Thu May 30 16:36:00 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    In case you didn't know it, Fidonet is and has always been a DOS
    based network.
    MvdV>>> Not any more.
    MvdV>>> Systen running on pure DOS are the rare exceptions these days.

    Mine for instance ;-).

    MvdV> Wrong tense. Your DOS FrontDoor system /was/ one of the rare exceptions. MvdV> It is no longer operational.

    I still use it daily, I am writing on it now.
    Only the transfer stopped (temporarely) because of a defective RS232 card.
    Now I use the Raspberry Pi 1B2 with RISC OS and !ROSBink for that at IP.
    Then I move the received pkt's to it by floppy disk, and the sended out ones back to the Pi. The Acorn RiscPC is the central machine in the local net to
    do the transfers. Part of it is automated.
    When I am ready with the Husky system at Raspbian Stretch, than that will become the UniCorn BBS machine, may be even with POTS again too.
    I have an USB2A from/to RS232c cable wich works great for my AIS receiver at the Pi 3B with OpenCPN 4.99.0 on Raspbian Stretch Linux 2018.

    MvdV> It may have been the last of the Mohikans. ;-)

    Yes.

    MvdV>>> AFAIK no Fidonet mailer ever ran on an 8 bit system.
    That is not completely sure.
    MvdV> Note the "AFAIK".

    That's why I was explaining it here.

    Some guys of our othernet AcoNet wrote FTN BBCscan software for the 8
    bit Acorn BBC B computers to communicatie with FidoNet systems.

    I too wrote software for my 8 bit Flex system to "communicate with
    Fidonet systems". I could use it to read and write messages posted on
    BBS's participating in Fidonet. But it was not a Fidonet mailer. It
    could not do FTS-1.

    Our Acorn BBC B's could do later on with BBCscan.

    That was at the end of the 80's start of the 90's.

    MvdV> If that Acorn BBS system was really a Fidonet system, what was its node MvdV> number and in which period was it in the Fidonet nodelist?

    I donot know the Node numbers, but the first one was Evert Snel, he later on moved from The Hague to Eindhoven area and transferred his body to become a female, they call such people transgenders.
    The other one was Simon Voortman in Ouddorp who still is a FidoNet node.
    Later he changed his 8 bit machines for the 26 and 32 bit RISC OS machines. There were two other 8 bit Acorn sysop's in AcoNet in the area of Alpen aan de Rijn, but I do not know if they were FidoNetters too?

    Henri.

    ---
    * Origin: Computing Apart Together (2:280/1208)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Henri Derksen on Fri May 31 11:00:55 2019
    I do not know the Node numbers, but the first one was Evert Snel,

    2:512/100 Evert Snel from Delft Holland 1988.01.08 -1989.06.16
    2:285/810 Evert Snel from Delft 1993.02.19 - 1994.05.06
    2:281/633 Evert Snel from Delft 1994.03.18 - 1996.08.02

    Once again thanks to Pavel Gulchouck 2:463/68



    ..

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  • From Ward Dossche@2:292/854 to Björn Felten on Fri May 31 11:19:42 2019

    Once again thanks to Pavel Gulchouck 2:463/68

    You definitely must have relatives in the Netherlands.

    \%/@rd

    --- D'Bridge 3.99
    * Origin: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards (2:292/854)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Ward Dossche on Fri May 31 13:28:24 2019
    Once again thanks to Pavel Gulchouck 2:463/68

    You definitely must have relatives in the Netherlands.

    Negatory. My relatives on my father's side all come from Jewish parts of Germany and on my mother's side from all Arian parts of Sweden. All about eight generations back, that's as far as I have managed to track them down.

    Being a long time native Swede, I probably have a little Walloon genes in my blood, since almost all Swedes living today do. But that should be Belgium and not the Netherlands, no?


    ..

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
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  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Henri Derksen on Fri May 31 14:23:20 2019
    Hello Henri,

    On Thursday May 30 2019 16:06, you wrote to me:

    At this moment I donot like the UTF 8 circus.

    MvdV>> "Onbekend maakt onbemind".

    That's not the problem,

    I think it is for at least a part. You obviously did not know that ASCII is a subset of UTF-8. The part about "unknown" is certainly true.

    but that it does not work at my favorite machine,

    Your favourite machine is 30 years old. How long can you expect the rest of Fidonet to hold back because you want to hold on to three decades old stuff? If all of mankind had that attitude, there would not have been a mankind. We'd never have left the sea and still be fish.

    MvdV>> In Dutch the accents and tremas are essential.

    You can often read that from the context,

    And sometimes one can not.

    so accents not always necessarry.

    "not always" != "never".

    There is also the reading experience. The eye also wants its share. Text with proper accentuation and punctuation is much more pleasent to read than the bare minimum where one has to guess what is meant exactly.

    Many people use them in the wrong way too, or do not use
    them at all.

    That's no excuse. Just as it is no excuse that some people do not espect red lights.

    MvdV>> "Een" and "‚‚n" mean different things.

    You can write e'e'n in stead, no special apostrophes needed ;-).

    I can, but it looks awfull. Plus that if I need to encase it in quotes, reading becomes a parsing contest: 'e'e'n'. Can you parse "'e'e'n'"?

    MvdV>> "Roel" and "Ro‰l" are not the same person.

    You can write Ro"el, no special apostrophes needed ;-).

    I can write it. In the sense that with some effort I can push the required keys in my keyboard. But when I see "Ro"el" I have to think very hard to extract the meaning. Plus that search algoritms will not work with this encoding. Googling "Ro‰l" and "Ro"el" give very different results.

    At the basis school I learned that the trema means a split before the character it is placed on. So Ro"el is correct and Roe"l is
    wrong.

    So you say. But my guess is that that is just your opinion and not fact learned at school. When I learned to read at school there were no computers ans ASCII did not exist yet. Dutch typewrites could deal witg accents and tremas in the proper way. Encodeing ano with trema as the sequence ""o" or "o"" was totally unheard of. Yiu are younger than me,abiou at decade, but I do not think you learned this abberant encoding in elementary school,

    Other point is the points on the i with a trema. There should
    be three of them not two, because the letter i already has one of its
    own. The trema is an extra 2 points, so in total 3. A good typewriter
    does this write well, i.e. which all the three points.

    If you say so. I have never seen such a typewriter. If an ‹ is created by overstriking it may result in three dots above. I would not say that therefore it is correct. Language is not logic, it follows its own rules. The convention is two dots over the i.

    That's why I am allways talking about the Point(s) on the i ;-).

    Then put your money where your moyh is and TYPE an '¡' with three dots above. ;-)

    The Duth "y with dots are mostly spelled as two characters "ij"

    That is not how I learned it in elementary school. On Roggeveen's "Aap, noot mies" leesplankje yje "ij" in "Gijs" was one letter:

    https://www.knutselstore.nl/diamond-painting/diamond-painting-aap-noot-mies-40x 60/

    And that is how I learned to write it. ONE letter, written without lifting the pen from the paper. Writing it as a the digraph 'ij' was a consession to internationalisation when the market was flooded with foreign typewriters not supporting the Dutch concatenated 'ij'

    In Germany they do the same by placing a letter e behind
    vowels with an Umlaut, nothing wrong with that.

    Waht is wring wit it, is that it only works for Germany. In Dutch it does not wok because most of those combinations are already "taken". "ae" "ie" "ee" and "oe" are already tekan.

    MvdV>> And than of course there are languages with a completely
    MvdV>> different alfabet, Greek and Russian come to mind.

    That is a far from my bed show,

    Yet there are EU countries were Cyrillic is the alfabet for the native Language. North Macedonia and Bulgaria come to mind. It is not all that far. You can het there in your own car without needing a passport.

    I have not the energy for to learn.

    Pity. But you can't bocj the rest of Fidonet just because of that...

    MvdV>> Bj”rn is right. The 26 letters of the ASCII character set are
    MvdV>> not enough to properly express oneself in writing. Even for the
    MvdV>> Brittish it is not enough . No pound sign 'œ' in ASCII...

    You can write UKP for it, no special sign needed ;-).

    The problem with thse acronyms is that they are seldom unique. I get hundreds of hit when I google "UKP". For startes:

    Univeriteits Kliniek voor Paarden.
    Utrechtse Komeptite Programmeren.
    Ukranian Kommunist Party
    Unieke Kansen Programma
    UKP Worldwide (a parcel service)
    UKP Prins Joep I

    And so on, and so on. The UK Pound may have been way further down the list.

    MvdV>> The early computers were a step back.

    Yes.

    MvdV>> My first typewriter had no problems with accents and tremas.

    Mine the same.

    MvdV>> It even had a key for the Dutch concatenatd 'ij'.

    I have never learned about that special character at schools.

    See above. It was NOt a special charactyer when I learned it. It was the 'y'that was "foreign".

    MvdV>> But computers have evolved.

    Yes, not every one will follow, we have here someone only writing in
    lc. That's a choice others should also respect.

    Respect should be a two way street...


    First I have the UniCorn BBS system at Dos 5 with CP437

    MvdV>> My memory may fail me, but IIRC even DOS 5 had the CHCP command
    MvdV>> to switch code pages.

    I am aware of that.

    MvdV>> It came with at least a dozen. CP850 and CP866 included.

    In the fido software you could choose for one at a time only.
    Changing after every message was and still is almost undoable.
    For the next message you had to leave all the programs, than change codepage, en then start all programs up again,

    Then maybe you should widen your horizon. Even for DOS reader that can change encoding on the fly have been around for a quarter of a century. No excuse..

    MvdV>> For DOS there was also CYRILLIC.COM.

    Even a far from my bed show I have not the energy for.

    Just downloading the program and typing CYRILLIC at the DOS prompt did the trick.

    MvdV>> Almost all websites are UTF-8 these days. So of course you will
    MvdV>> hve problems with saving it in Latin-1. Adapt or be left
    MvdV>> behind...

    I had no choice,

    There is always a choice. You have choosen to not upgrade your hardware to keep op with 21st century state of the art and stay with your antiquated harware. That is your choice. I respect that, but I won't go as far as completely halting progress for all of Fidonet just because you choose to stagnate.


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Henri Derksen on Fri May 31 22:02:26 2019
    Hello Henri,

    On Thursday May 30 2019 16:36, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> Wrong tense. Your DOS FrontDoor system /was/ one of the rare
    MvdV>> exceptions. It is no longer operational.

    I still use it daily, I am writing on it now.
    Only the transfer stopped (temporarely) because of a defective RS232
    card.

    The transfer part is an essential part of a Fidonet node. Without the ability to transfer files to other Fidonet systems it does not qualify as an operational Fidonet system. The fact that you use it as a terminal to read mail, does not make it an operational Fido system.

    Now I use the Raspberry Pi 1B2 with RISC OS and !ROSBink for that at
    IP.

    So your Pi is the operational Fido system.

    Then I move the received pkt's to it by floppy disk, and the sended
    out ones back to the Pi. The Acorn RiscPC is the central machine in
    the local net to do the transfers.

    What you do with the pkt's is not pat of Fidonet strictly speaking.

    MvdV>> It may have been the last of the Mohikans. ;-)

    Yes.

    So write an article for the Smooze about it... :)

    MvdV>>>> AFAIK no Fidonet mailer ever ran on an 8 bit system.

    That is not completely sure.

    MvdV>> Note the "AFAIK".

    That's why I was explaining it here.

    OK...

    Some guys of our othernet AcoNet wrote FTN BBCscan software for
    the 8 bit Acorn BBC B computers to communicatie with FidoNet
    systems.

    I too wrote software for my 8 bit Flex system to "communicate with
    Fidonet systems". I could use it to read and write messages posted
    on BBS's participating in Fidonet. But it was not a Fidonet
    mailer. It could not do FTS-1.

    Our Acorn BBC B's could do later on with BBCscan.

    Still not a Fidonet node...

    That was at the end of the 80's start of the 90's.

    MvdV>> If that Acorn BBS system was really a Fidonet system, what was
    MvdV>> its node number and in which period was it in the Fidonet
    MvdV>> nodelist?

    I donot know the Node numbers, but the first one was Evert Snel, he
    later on moved from The Hague to Eindhoven area and transferred his
    body to become a female, they call such people transgenders.

    Your point?


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Björn Felten on Fri May 31 22:09:45 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    On Friday May 31 2019 11:00, you wrote to Henri Derksen:

    I do not know the Node numbers, but the first one was Evert Snel,

    2:512/100 Evert Snel from Delft Holland 1988.01.08 -1989.06.16
    2:285/810 Evert Snel from Delft 1993.02.19 - 1994.05.06
    2:281/633 Evert Snel from Delft 1994.03.18 - 1996.08.02

    Once again thanks to Pavel Gulchouck 2:463/68

    So there was a sysop listed by the name of Evert Snel. That does not prove he ran an operational Fidonet system on an 8 bit machine does it.

    And if he did, it does not negate that AFAIK no Fidonet node ever ran on an 8 bit system. It just shows that I do not know everything. Regarding proving your point... You have thrown up so many smoke screens by now that I have lost track of whatever your point was. Congratulations.

    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Ward Dossche@2:292/854 to Björn Felten on Fri May 31 23:59:07 2019
    Once again thanks to Pavel Gulchouck 2:463/68

    You definitely must have relatives in the Netherlands.

    Negatory.

    I only asked because you have a habit of stating the obvious and making it sound as if you just invented the hot water.

    Pavel Gulchouck's work can be accessed from the updated first page at fidonet.org, it's not something you unearthed.

    \%/@rd

    --- D'Bridge 3.99
    * Origin: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards (2:292/854)
  • From Ward Dossche@2:292/854 to Michiel van der Vlist on Fri May 31 23:59:10 2019
    Regarding
    proving your point... You have thrown up so many smoke screens by now
    that I have lost track of whatever your point was. Congratulations.

    It is called "Pulling a Witt".

    \%/@rd

    --- D'Bridge 3.99
    * Origin: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards (2:292/854)
  • From David Drummond@3:640/305 to Ward Dossche on Sat Jun 1 11:00:27 2019
    On 31/05/2019 23:59, Ward Dossche -> Michiel van der Vlist wrote:

    Regarding proving your point... You have thrown up so many smoke screens by now
    that I have lost track of whatever your point was. Congratulations.

    It is called "Pulling a Witt".

    He whose name must not be mentioned......

    --

    Gang warily
    David

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.8.0
    * Origin: Bucca, Qld, Australia (3:640/305)
  • From Ward Dossche@2:292/854.1 to David Drummond on Sat Jun 1 10:25:21 2019
    It is called "Pulling a Witt".

    He whose name must not be mentioned......

    It's not exactly Godwin's law.

    Ward

    --- AfterShock/Android 1.6.8
    * Origin: Baby-Glacier (2:292/854.1)
  • From Henri Derksen@2:280/1208 to Michiel van der Vlist on Sun Jun 2 02:55:00 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    MvdV> So your Pi is the operational Fido system.

    Ok.

    Some guys of our othernet AcoNet wrote FTN BBCscan software for
    the 8 bit Acorn BBC B computers to communicatie with FidoNet
    systems.

    Not as a BBS user or a Point but as a Mailer.

    Our Acorn BBC B's could do later on with BBCscan.

    MvdV> Still not a Fidonet node...

    We had at least 4 sysops both AcoNet and FidoNet with 8 Bit Acorn BBC machines, one even an Acorn Electron, and that guy Richard Splinter even wrote his own BBS program CBBS for his Electron.

    That was at the end of the 80's start of the 90's.

    MvdV>>> If that Acorn BBS system was really a Fidonet system, what was
    MvdV>>> its node number and in which period was it in the Fidonet
    MvdV>>> nodelist?

    I donot know the Node numbers,

    Yesterday I saw a file with Both AcoNet and FidoNet nodenumbers including sysop names and phonenumbers, but today I could not find it anymore :-(.
    some time i'll see it later. Memory is a difficult matter ;-(.

    but the first one was Evert Snel, he later on moved from The Hague to
    Eindhoven area and transferred his body to become a female,
    they call such people transgenders.

    MvdV> Your point?

    (S)he was for a long time our AcoNet host and also had a FidoNet node number. He wrote BBCscan for tossing and scanning mail from/to PKT for both AcoNet and FidoNet.

    Henri.

    ---
    * Origin: Computing Apart Together (2:280/1208)
  • From Henri Derksen@2:280/1208 to Michiel van der Vlist on Sun Jun 2 03:59:00 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    MvdV> So there was a sysop listed by the name of Evert Snel. That does not MvdV> prove he ran an operational Fidonet system on an 8 bit machine does it.

    Look here:
    <http://eveliensnel.com/bbs>
    you unbelievable Thomas.
    And also here:
    <http://evelinsnel.com/cv>

    His own written mailer was BBSCan with FTS001, and his Nodenumber was: 2:512/100.

    The other 8 bit Acorn guys with an AcoNet and FidoNet Nodenumber were:
    Richard Splinter from The Cage BBS, with CBBS at an Acorn Electron,
    Jan Jaap van der Geer from Brother John BBS,
    Peet Scholte from HUCO BBS at an Acorn Archimedes,
    Simon Voortman from The Coast BBS at an Acorn BBC B,
    BBS De Ranstad at an Acorn A3000,
    And there were sure some more, even one in Danmark QuercusBBS!
    also some Acorn systems in Germany;
    Yeti Flensburg Birger Harzenetter,
    ArcPool Wolfsburg Stefan Brueck,
    ArcWay Berlin Andreas Itzigehl.
    And the World of Cryton BBS at 2:201/226 in England.
    Is this enough proof?

    MvdV> And if he did, it does not negate that AFAIK no Fidonet node ever ran on MvdV> an 8 bit system.

    No, but you just gave the suggestion there were none.
    That AFAIK is only a sort of security in case you missed something.

    MvdV> It just shows that I do not know everything.

    Of course not, No one knows everything, nothing to shame for.

    MvdV> Regarding proving your point...

    I told you many years before we had more systems running BBSes and exchanging mail in both AcoNet and FidoNet on both 8 bit and 26 bit Acorn computers.
    Also Jan Vermeulen was member of AcoNet and had Acorn computers,
    but his BBS and mailer ran on dos PC's, so was mine.

    MvdV> You have thrown up so many smoke screens by now

    That's your coloured view.
    I did not have the intention to hide something.
    (S)he (Evelien) is still alive and kicking as you can see at her website.
    You also know Simon Voortman.
    He can stand that he ran his BBS at an Acorn BBC, including AcoNet, but
    I am unsure when he started being a member of FidoNet,
    or if he already changed his BBS to a 26 bit Acorn A5000 or Acorn RiscPC.
    He also used his R7500 for that task some time.
    Now he uses a Linux system with Husky.

    MvdV> that I have lost track of whatever your point was. Congratulations.

    I'll send you some Dutch files to prove more.

    Henri.

    ---
    * Origin: Computing Apart Together (2:280/1208)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Ward Dossche on Sun Jun 2 08:24:29 2019
    Pavel Gulchouck's work can be accessed from the updated first page at fidonet.org, it's not something you unearthed.

    Ahhhh, I see. So you want to think that *you* "unearthed" it 12 May 2019? Sorry, but I've known about it for many years before that.



    ..

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Ward Dossche@2:292/854 to Björn Felten on Sun Jun 2 10:47:34 2019

    Pavel Gulchouck's work can be accessed from the updated first page BF>WD> at fidonet.org, it's not something you unearthed.

    Ahhhh, I see. So you want to think that *you* "unearthed" it 12 May
    2019? Sorry, but I've known about it for many years before that.

    Imagine all the nice articles you could have written in the meantime instead of just pissing around.

    \%/@rd

    --- D'Bridge 3.99
    * Origin: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards (2:292/854)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Henri Derksen on Sun Jun 2 10:31:31 2019
    Hello Henri,

    On Sunday June 02 2019 02:55, you wrote to me:

    including sysop names and phonenumbers, but today I could not find it anymore :-(. some time i'll see it later. Memory is a difficult matter ;-(.

    Sounds familiar. ;-)

    but the first one was Evert Snel, he later on moved from The
    Hague to Eindhoven area and transferred his body to become a
    female, they call such people transgenders.

    MvdV>> Your point?

    (S)he was for a long time our AcoNet host and also had a FidoNet node number. He wrote BBCscan for tossing and scanning mail from/to PKT for both AcoNet and FidoNet.

    I meant what was your point when mentioning the gender change? How is that relevant to the issue that started al this? Which - if my memory does not fail me - was the character encoding to be used for Fidonews articles?


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Henri Derksen on Sun Jun 2 11:02:10 2019
    Hello Henri,

    On Sunday June 02 2019 03:59, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> You have thrown up so many smoke screens by now

    That's your coloured view.
    I did not have the intention to hide something.

    It was directed at Bj"orn (That is the correct spelling according to you, isn''t it?)

    IIRC we were discussing the encoding to be used for Fidonews articles. Sidetracking into the question if there ever were Fidonet nodes running on 8 bit systems is just a smoke screen.

    (S)he (Evelien) is still alive and kicking as you can see at her
    website. You also know Simon Voortman. He can stand that he ran his
    BBS at an Acorn BBC, including AcoNet, but I am unsure when he started being a member of FidoNet, or if he already changed his BBS to a 26
    bit Acorn A5000 or Acorn RiscPC. He also used his R7500 for that task
    some time. Now he uses a Linux system with Husky.

    MvdV>> that I have lost track of whatever your point was.
    MvdV>> Congratulations.

    I'll send you some Dutch files to prove more.

    Please don't. You have convinced met that there were Fidonet nodes running on an 8 bit systems. Can we now please let this smoke screen drift away?

    I am not in the mood of spending much time behind the screen today. Summer has arrived....


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Ward Dossche on Sun Jun 2 11:18:23 2019
    Imagine all the nice articles you could have written in the meantime instead of just pissing around.

    Ditto.



    ..

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Sun Jun 2 11:20:57 2019
    MvdV> Sidetracking into the question if there ever were Fidonet nodes running
    MvdV> on 8 bit systems is just a smoke screen.

    As opposed to your claim that there never was an FTN mailer running on an 8-bit system, you mean?



    ..

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Sun Jun 2 11:26:00 2019
    MvdV> if my memory does not fail me - was the character encoding to be used
    MvdV> for Fidonews articles?

    It *does* fail you. The question was what character encoding to use if you want your article to show as you want it to in the echo -- not in the actual Fidonews.

    Your IPv6 list seems to show OK in both versions every week, no...?




    ..

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Björn Felten on Sun Jun 2 11:49:03 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    On Sunday June 02 2019 11:20, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> Sidetracking into the question if there ever were Fidonet nodes
    MvdV>> running on 8 bit systems is just a smoke screen.

    As opposed to your claim that there never was an FTN mailer running
    on an 8-bit system, you mean?

    I made no such claim. What I stated was that I did not KNOW of any such systems.

    Henri has provided the information that showed such systems DID exist. Running on an Acorn system. Thereby disproving your claim:

    In case you didn't know it, Fidonet is and has always been a DOS
    based network.

    Which claim was a smoke screen.


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Björn Felten on Sun Jun 2 11:42:00 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    On Sunday June 02 2019 11:26, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> if my memory does not fail me - was the character encoding to
    MvdV>> be used for Fidonews articles?

    It *does* fail you. The question was what character encoding to use
    if you want your article to show as you want it to in the echo -- not
    in the actual Fidonews.

    So your smoke screen was effective, you made me lose track of what it was all about.

    Congratulations!

    Your IPv6 list seems to show OK in both versions every week, no...?

    For now.

    Wait and see what happens if one of our Russian, Ukranian or Greek friends also wants the name correctly spelled in his|her native language.


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Sun Jun 2 12:34:30 2019
    MvdV> So your smoke screen was effective,

    Your definition of a smoke smoke screen obviously is different from mine. Trying to elaborate a discussion is not what I, and most of the scientific world, would call a smoke screen.

    YMMV. Obviously. :(



    ..

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Henri Derksen on Sun Jun 2 16:51:26 2019
    Hello Henri,

    On Sunday June 02 2019 03:59, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> So there was a sysop listed by the name of Evert Snel. That does
    MvdV>> not prove he ran an operational Fidonet system on an 8 bit
    MvdV>> machine does it.

    Look here:
    <http://eveliensnel.com/bbs>

    Hmmm. I waded through a few pages. Then I gave up. It is 30 Celsius here. Too hot to spend much time behind the screen.

    you unbelievable Thomas.

    "Doubting Thomas".

    You wil have to live with that. I am a scientist. I am educated (indoctrinated if you want) with the basic principle of never accepting something as fact just because someone says so.

    Every scientist should be a "doubting thomas".

    And also here:
    <http://evelinsnel.com/cv>

    "Server not found".


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Sun Jun 2 17:16:48 2019
    <http://eveliensnel.com/bbs>

    MvdV> Hmmm. I waded through a few pages.

    <http://evelinsnel.com/cv>

    MvdV> "Server not found".

    Since the first server obviously was found, can it be that the second link was misspelled and should be:

    http://eveliensnel.com/bbs/

    Just asking, without really being interested...



    ..

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Sun Jun 2 17:21:36 2019
    Since the first server obviously was found, can it be that the
    second link was misspelled and should be:

    http://eveliensnel.com/bbs/

    I meant http://eveliensnel.com/cv/ obviously.




    ..

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Björn Felten on Sun Jun 2 21:42:44 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    On Sunday June 02 2019 17:21, you wrote to me:

    Since the first server obviously was found, can it be that
    the second link was misspelled and should be:

    http://eveliensnel.com/bbs/

    I meant http://eveliensnel.com/cv/ obviously.

    Nah. it was a temporay glitch. The link is working now.

    A wild goose chase. There is nothing there regarding any Fidonet node (s)he supposedly ran. Somebody wasted my valuable time.


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Sun Jun 2 22:14:20 2019
    MvdV> Nah. it was a temporay glitch. The link is working now.

    No it wasn't. It was a permanent "glitch" caused by a missing E in the URL.

    <http://evelinsnel.com/cv>

    ... rather than the proper

    <http://eveliensnel.com/cv>

    And you should have been able to detect that, just as I did, based upon the "server not found" response.



    ..

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Björn Felten on Sun Jun 2 22:27:24 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    On Sunday June 02 2019 22:14, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> Nah. it was a temporay glitch. The link is working now.

    No it wasn't. It was a permanent "glitch" caused by a missing E in
    the URL.

    <http://evelinsnel.com/cv>

    ... rather than the proper

    <http://eveliensnel.com/cv>

    And you should have been able to detect that, just as I did,

    And you could have told me right away instead of wasting my time over a spelling error.

    Congratulations for once again winnig a pissing contest.


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Sun Jun 2 22:45:57 2019
    MvdV> And you could have told me right away

    How? If not the way I did it?

    Are you doing a Ward now? Never publicly admit that you made a mistake?



    ..

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Björn Felten on Sun Jun 2 23:09:48 2019
    Hello Bj”rn,

    On Sunday June 02 2019 22:45, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> And you could have told me right away

    How? If not the way I did it?

    You could have explicitly told me it was the missing 'e' that was the problem. Instead of just providing the corrected link.

    Are you doing a Ward now? Never publicly admit that you made a
    mistake?

    Yes I made the mistake of just copy pasting your corrected link, see it work end never realising it differed from the link provided by Henri. I never noticed that missing 'e'.

    FYI: I suffer from a mild form of dislexia. I am blind to these kind of subtle spelling errors unless it is explicitly pointed out to me.

    Happy now?


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Dan Clough@1:123/115 to Michiel van der Vlist on Sun Jun 2 18:42:00 2019
    Michiel van der Vlist wrote to Bj”rn Felten <=-

    And you should have been able to detect that, just as I did,

    And you could have told me right away instead of wasting my time
    over a spelling error.

    Congratulations for once again winnig a pissing contest.

    Why do you keep entering said contests with him?



    ... Facts cannot prevail against faith, or adamant folly.
    === MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    --- SBBSecho 3.07-Linux
    * Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (1:123/115)
  • From David Drummond@3:640/305 to Michiel van der Vlist on Mon Jun 3 11:54:26 2019
    On 3/06/2019 00:51, Michiel van der Vlist -> Henri Derksen wrote:

    Look here:
    <http://eveliensnel.com/bbs>

    MvdV> Hmmm. I waded through a few pages. Then I gave up. It is 30 Celsius
    MvdV> here. Too hot to spend much time behind the screen.

    30C is "too hot"?

    I spent some weeks this last (southern hemisphere) summer enjoying 44C day after day.

    30C is just balmy.

    --

    Gang warily
    David

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.8.0
    * Origin: Bucca, Qld, Australia (3:640/305)
  • From David Drummond@3:640/305 to Björn Felten on Mon Jun 3 11:57:04 2019
    On 3/06/2019 06:45, 2:203/2 wrote:
    MvdV>> And you could have told me right away

    How? If not the way I did it?

    Are you doing a Ward now? Never publicly admit that you made a
    mistake?

    When did Ward ever make a mistake?

    He thought he was mistaken once - but he was wrong.

    --

    Gang warily
    David

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.8.0
    * Origin: Bucca, Qld, Australia (3:640/305)
  • From Tony Langdon@3:633/410 to David Drummond on Mon Jun 3 12:10:00 2019
    On 06-03-19 11:54, David Drummond wrote to Michiel van der Vlist <=-

    30C is just balmy.

    Yep, 30C is just a pleasant day.:)


    ... Got my tie caught in the fax... Suddenly I was in L.A.
    === MultiMail/Win32 v0.49
    --- SBBSecho 3.03-Linux
    * Origin: Freeway BBS Bendigo,Australia freeway.apana.org.au (3:633/410)
  • From Kees van Eeten@2:280/5003.4 to Tony Langdon on Mon Jun 3 11:33:32 2019
    Hello Tony!

    03 Jun 19 12:10, you wrote to David Drummond:

    On 06-03-19 11:54, David Drummond wrote to Michiel van der Vlist <=-

    30C is just balmy.

    Yep, 30C is just a pleasant day.:)

    It was a nice spring day. Yesterday I returned from a three day meeting with
    R24 Fidonutters. Almost the whole trip from Frankfurt over Hannover to my
    place, the car thermometer indicated 33 deg C.

    Kees

    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5--b20180707
    * Origin: As for me, all I know is that, I know nothing. (2:280/5003.4)
  • From Tony Langdon@3:633/410 to Kees van Eeten on Mon Jun 3 22:23:00 2019
    On 06-03-19 11:33, Kees van Eeten wrote to Tony Langdon <=-

    It was a nice spring day. Yesterday I returned from a three day
    meeting with
    R24 Fidonutters. Almost the whole trip from Frankfurt over Hannover to my
    place, the car thermometer indicated 33 deg C.

    Send some of that here. :) Expecting 13 tomorrow. :/


    ... All good things must come to an e
    === MultiMail/Win32 v0.49
    --- SBBSecho 3.03-Linux
    * Origin: Freeway BBS Bendigo,Australia freeway.apana.org.au (3:633/410)
  • From BOB ACKLEY@1:123/140 to MICHIEL VAN DER VLIST on Mon Jun 3 16:04:50 2019
    Hello Bjÿrn,

    On Sunday June 02 2019 11:20, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> Sidetracking into the question if there ever were Fidonet nodes
    MvdV>> running on 8 bit systems is just a smoke screen.

    As opposed to your claim that there never was an FTN mailer running on an 8-bit system, you mean?

    I made no such claim. What I stated was that I did not KNOW of any such systems.

    Henri has provided the information that showed such systems DID exist.
    Running
    on an Acorn system. Thereby disproving your claim:

    In case you didn't know it, Fidonet is and has always been a DOS based network.

    Which claim was a smoke screen.

    A fellow named Jack WInslade in Omaha, NE, wrote a complete Fidonet
    system that ran under CP/M on 8080 and Z-80 processors. Originally he
    called it 'Tabby' (for some reason) but somebody who already had
    something with that name threatened to sue him so he renamed it 'Ybbat.'
    He had several CP/M systems in the Omaha area that ran on various 8-bit machines, including a Heath H-8 and an IMSAI 8080
    --- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
    * Origin: Fido Since 1991 | QWK by Web | BBS.FIDOSYSOP.ORG (1:123/140)
  • From BOB ACKLEY@1:123/140 to BJÆ’RN FELTEN on Mon Jun 3 16:06:42 2019
    MvdV> Sidetracking into the question if there ever were Fidonet nodes
    running
    MvdV> on 8 bit systems is just a smoke screen.

    As opposed to your claim that there never was an FTN mailer running
    on an
    8-bit system, you mean?

    Thirty or so years ago, 1:285/0 and 1:285/1 were both running on 8-bit
    CP/M systems. 285/0 was the hub for the Omaha, NE, area
    --- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
    * Origin: Fido Since 1991 | QWK by Web | BBS.FIDOSYSOP.ORG (1:123/140)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to David Drummond on Mon Jun 3 22:30:29 2019
    Hello David,

    On Monday June 03 2019 11:54, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> Hmmm. I waded through a few pages. Then I gave up. It is 30
    MvdV>> Celsius here. Too hot to spend much time behind the screen.

    30C is "too hot"?

    That was the temperature outside. Here in the room where my keyboard and screen are it was hotter.

    To hot to argue with Bj"orn. ;-)

    I spent some weeks this last (southern hemisphere) summer enjoying 44C
    day after day.

    30C is just balmy.

    You are closer to the equator. Here at 52 degrees North, we are supposed to have a moderate climate. In my youth temperatures above 30C were rare. Now we see it more often, but it is still considere hot here. Out bodies are not tuned to it. 44C is (still) unheard of here.

    You live near the tropics and are more used to it. Even ethogh here (the meteorological) summer has just started and you are at the start of winter.



    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Kees van Eeten on Mon Jun 3 22:43:45 2019
    Hello Kees,

    On Monday June 03 2019 11:33, you wrote to Tony Langdon:

    Yep, 30C is just a pleasant day.:)

    It was a nice spring day. Yesterday I returned from a three day
    meeting with R24 Fidonutters. Almost the whole trip from Frankfurt
    over Hannover to my place, the car thermometer indicated 33 deg C.

    You were born in the tropics. You have cooling fluid in your blood. ;-)


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From David Drummond@3:640/305 to Michiel van der Vlist on Tue Jun 4 11:40:13 2019
    On 4/06/2019 06:30, Michiel van der Vlist -> David Drummond wrote:

    30C is "too hot"?

    MvdV> That was the temperature outside. Here in the room where my keyboard and
    MvdV> screen are it was hotter.

    MvdV> To hot to argue with Bj"orn. ;-)

    True

    I spent some weeks this last (southern hemisphere) summer enjoying 44C
    day after day.

    30C is just balmy.

    MvdV> You are closer to the equator. Here at 52 degrees North, we are supposed
    MvdV> to have a moderate climate.

    I am at 25 degrees south, but we didn't see 44C here.

    I was travelling and was visiting as far as 34 degrees south. I was somewhat inland (Cootamundra NSW) and it was a very dry atmosphere. Where I live is just 25km inland, it gets very humid which seems to hold the actual temperature down somewhat.

    MvdV> In my youth temperatures above 30C were
    MvdV> rare. Now we see it more often, but it is still considered hot here. Our
    MvdV> bodies are not tuned to it. 44C is (still) unheard of here.

    MvdV> You live near the tropics and are more used to it. Even though here (the
    MvdV> meteorological) summer has just started and you are at the start of winter.

    Yes, winter has started. I am seeing it down to 7C at night (nearly midday now and it's 16C).

    --

    Gang warily
    David

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.8.0
    * Origin: Bucca, Qld, Australia (3:640/305)
  • From Kees van Eeten@2:280/5003.4 to Michiel van der Vlist on Tue Jun 4 00:50:32 2019
    Hello Michiel!

    03 Jun 19 22:43, you wrote to me:

    It was a nice spring day. Yesterday I returned from a three day
    meeting with R24 Fidonutters. Almost the whole trip from Frankfurt
    over Hannover to my place, the car thermometer indicated 33 deg C.

    MvdV> You were born in the tropics. You have cooling fluid in your blood. ;-)

    I was born 52.071857 N 4.272893 E near the end of the year.
    According to the Weather buro the minimum temerature was -0.1 deg C and
    the max was 5.2 deg C

    If there is something in my blood it is ethylene-glycol, as not all rooms
    were heated.

    Your turn. ;)

    Kees

    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5--b20180707
    * Origin: As for me, all I know is that, I know nothing. (2:280/5003.4)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Kees van Eeten on Tue Jun 4 12:16:00 2019
    Hello Kees,

    On Tuesday June 04 2019 00:50, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> You were born in the tropics. You have cooling fluid in your
    MvdV>> blood. ;-)

    I was born 52.071857 N 4.272893 E near the end of the year.

    Oops. So you just lived there for a while?

    According to the Weather buro the minimum temerature was -0.1 deg C
    and the max was 5.2 deg C

    If there is something in my blood it is ethylene-glycol, as not all
    rooms were heated.

    Your turn. ;)

    I know when and where I was born. I am not nosy enough to spend time to find out what the weather was then and there.


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Kees van Eeten@2:280/5003.4 to Michiel van der Vlist on Tue Jun 4 13:47:36 2019
    Hello Michiel!

    04 Jun 19 12:16, you wrote to me:

    I was born 52.071857 N 4.272893 E near the end of the year.

    MvdV> Oops. So you just lived there for a while?

    I think from 1950 till August 1958 when I had to attend secondary school.

    According to the Weather buro the minimum temerature was -0.1 deg C
    and the max was 5.2 deg C

    MvdV> I know when and where I was born. I am not nosy enough to spend time to
    MvdV> find out what the weather was then and there.

    I just asked Google for "knmi temperatuur <month> <year>",
    not for the temperature at the location.

    For the coordinates I have mapping software that I use when travelling.

    Kees

    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5--b20180707
    * Origin: As for me, all I know is that, I know nothing. (2:280/5003.4)
  • From Kees van Eeten@2:280/5003.4 to Michiel van der Vlist on Tue Jun 4 14:04:12 2019
    Hello Michiel!

    04 Jun 19 12:16, you wrote to me:

    I was born 52.071857 N 4.272893 E near the end of the year.

    MvdV> Oops. So you just lived there for a while?

    This was the last house we lived in 0.589271 N 101.441406 E

    What amazes me is that it seems the house is still there. The neighbourhood
    got extend as well as the roads to other locations. It still brings back
    a lot of memories when I look at the Google pictures. For that district
    they got better and better over time. How nive would it be if Google
    street view would be invited on the compound.

    At the time we lived there, we were not fenced in. But there was also no way
    to get there, other then by river boat.

    Kees

    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5--b20180707
    * Origin: As for me, all I know is that, I know nothing. (2:280/5003.4)
  • From Henri Derksen@2:280/1208 to Michiel van der Vlist on Wed Jun 5 01:58:00 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    MvdV> I think it is for at least a part. You obviously did not know that ASCII MvdV> is a subset of UTF-8. The part about "unknown" is certainly true.

    OK.

    MvdV> Your favourite machine is 30 years old.

    Only the case, powersupply, and motherboard.
    Every thing else is upgraded with more recent parts,
    i.e. including Kinetic StrongARM processor with extra memory at the processorcard, extra main and video memory, large HDD of 80 GB
    More serial ports, two NIC's, SCSI. Jaz drive, LCD monitor, USB ports etc.
    So it is a mucgh expanded machine.

    MvdV> How long can you expect the rest of Fidonet to hold back because you MvdV> want to hold on to three decades old stuff?

    Have you ever heard of KISS, Keep it Stupid Simple.
    The current race for every time new hard- and software is only an econmic reason to earn money and making very few people rich, i.e. Bill Gates etc..

    Some guys send much overhead in a Word file, for just a simple weblink.
    They could also send a simple textfile instead of a M$ Word file.
    The same happends with HTML in E-Mail. HTML is for websites, not for mail.

    MvdV> If all of mankind had that attitude, there would not have been a
    MvdV> mankind. We'd never have left the sea and still be fish.

    Now the fish in the oceans get more and more plastics to eat ;-(.
    Old western hardware is moved to eastern countries were it pollutes the soil.

    MvdV> There is also the reading experience. The eye also wants its share.

    In books and at posters yes,
    but for simple mail it is only giving the stress of unlimited choices.
    Here in the western world people ar going mad because of so many silly choices.
    See all that kinds of thea with fruits in it etc.
    Complete nonsense I think. I still use only one kind I always used.
    All others are overkill, even when you compare that to people who have no thea at all ;-(.

    You can write e'e'n in stead, no special apostrophes needed ;-).

    MvdV> I can, but it looks awfull.

    I donot care for that very few occasion.

    MvdV> Plus that if I need to encase it in quotes,
    MvdV> reading becomes a parsing contest: 'e'e'n'. Can you parse "'e'e'n'"?

    Why should it be enclosed in quotes?

    MvdV>>> "Roel" and "Ro‰l" are not the same person.

    You can write Ro"el, no special apostrophes needed ;-).

    MvdV> I can write it. In the sense that with some effort I can push the
    MvdV> required keys in my keyboard.

    And I have problems to find the right keys for that High ASCII character
    I seldom use. Besides that, on many machines it is something else for that character, no thanks. Almost no keyboard is the same ;-(.

    MvdV> But when I see "Ro"el" I have to think
    MvdV> very hard to extract the meaning. Plus that search algoritms will not MvdV> work with this encoding.

    That's just a much better privacy lock ;-).

    MvdV> Googling "Ro‰l" and "Ro"el" give very different results.

    You opposed not te be found by Google.

    At the basis school I learned that the trema means a split before the character it is placed on. So Ro"el is correct and Roe"l is
    wrong.

    MvdV> So you say. But my guess is that that is just your opinion and not fact MvdV> learned at school.

    It was explicitely explained where the word should be splitted,
    i.e. before the letter with the trema on it.

    MvdV> When I learned to read at school there were no computers ans ASCII
    MvdV> did not exist yet.

    That has nothing to do with it. The trema is needed to split the pronounciation
    between the two vowels, you normally speach out as one sound.
    It means a split in sound, and also writing to show the difference.

    MvdV> Dutch typewrites could deal witg accents and tremas in the proper way. MvdV> Encodeing ano with trema as the sequence ""o" or "o"" was totally
    MvdV> unheard of.

    Of course no one wrote the trema before a letter, but just above.
    You had only to think were the immaginary split of the sound should be
    en that was before the vowel with the trema, never behind.

    Other point is the points on the i with a trema. There should
    be three of them not two, because the letter i already has one of its
    own. The trema is an extra 2 points, so in total 3. A good typewriter
    does this write well, i.e. which all the three points.

    MvdV> If you say so. I have never seen such a typewriter. If an ‹ is created MvdV> by overstriking it may result in three dots above.

    And that is the only correct presentation, as the trema is an extra, above the normal letter i with its own point already above it.

    MvdV> I would not say that therefore it is correct. Language is not logic, MvdV> it follows its own rules. The convention is two dots over the i.

    I always wrote three points in the i when necessarry.
    Not any teacher corrected me of this writing, and after 1975 I wrote much by typewriting as I have a bad handwriting because of a small defect.

    That's why I am allways talking about the Point(s) on the i ;-).

    MvdV> Then put your money where your moyh is and TYPE an '¡' with three dots MvdV> above. ;-)

    In computer writing it is hardly possible to write 3 dots on the i.
    May be it could be done with LaTex?

    The Duth "y with dots are mostly spelled as two characters "ij"

    MvdV> That is not how I learned it in elementary school. On Roggeveen's
    MvdV> "Aap, noot mies" leesplankje yje "ij" in "Gijs" was one letter:

    MvdV> https://www.knutselstore.nl/diamond-painting/diamond-painting-aap-noot- MvdV> mies-40x60/

    I have never seen that at our schools.
    Only when my 5 years younger sister went to school in Rotterdam, she got that. My first impression was that is was a strange way of learning the reading.
    At our school in Nijmegen we had a more straight way, i.e. first learning the complete alphabet, and then starting reading in simple books.
    No kind of that reading woods ;-).

    MvdV> And that is how I learned to write it. ONE letter, written without
    MvdV> lifting the pen from the paper.

    We also learned to write the y in two letters without lifting the pen from
    the paper.
    I only saw that single character after I left my 5 schools I have been on.

    MvdV> Writing it as a the digraph 'ij' was a consession to
    MvdV> internationalisation when the market was flooded with
    MvdV> foreign typewriters not supporting the Dutch concatenated 'ij'

    My Swiss made typewriter Hermes 3000 from 1975 indeed does not have.
    The old first Hermes 3000 from 1969 from my mother neither.
    My Juki 2200 daisywheel typewriter with parallel port indeed has it,
    but I never used it, because I have not learned that letter.

    MvdV> Yet there are EU countries were Cyrillic is the alfabet for the native MvdV> Language. North Macedonia and Bulgaria come to mind. It is not all that MvdV> far. You can het there in your own car without needing a passport.

    I have not the energy for to learn.

    MvdV> Pity. But you can't bocj the rest of Fidonet just because of that...

    You are also going to learn at least the 2000 characters in Chinese or Japanes,
    Thay etc.?
    That is much more difficult.
    I see that great amount of characters the same as the UK way of counting money and measurements in feet, Pounds etc. as the USAsians still use.
    We have the more simpel metric system.
    As I wrote earlier; Keep it simple, in stead of much accents, from which several always give trouble.

    MvdV>>> Bj”rn is right. The 26 letters of the ASCII character set are
    MvdV>>> not enough to properly express oneself in writing. Even for the
    MvdV>>> Brittish it is not enough . No pound sign 'œ' in ASCII...

    You can write UKP for it, no special sign needed ;-).

    The problem with thse acronyms is that they are seldom unique.

    Every body will understand the term: this costs UKP 2.000,00

    Yes, not every one will follow, we have here someone only writing in
    lc. That's a choice others should also respect.

    MvdV> Respect should be a two way street...

    The same as love ;-).

    MvdV> Then maybe you should widen your horizon. Even for DOS reader that can MvdV> change encoding on the fly have been around for a quarter of a century.

    I have never seen that.
    At my BBS there I installed even a full screen editor for the users.
    But I hardly used it myself as it was not so easy to learn.

    MvdV> No excuse..

    You can not ask everyone to learn everything.
    I am glad that I did come so far unless my difficulties (handicaps).

    MvdV>>> For DOS there was also CYRILLIC.COM.
    Even a far from my bed show I have not the energy for.
    MvdV> Just downloading the program and typing CYRILLIC at the DOS prompt did MvdV> the trick.

    I still do not understand that language, and I save my energy for other more pleasant things to do. I already have enough trouble to work at.

    Henri.

    ---
    * Origin: Computing Apart Together (2:280/1208)
  • From Henri Derksen@2:280/1208 to Michiel van der Vlist on Wed Jun 5 01:28:00 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    MvdV> A wild goose chase. There is nothing there regarding any Fidonet node MvdV> (s)he supposedly ran. Somebody wasted my valuable time.

    Then you did not read the right links:

    http://www.eveliensnel.com/bbs/bulletin/bull_3.html

    http://www.eveliensnel.com/bbs/bulletin/bull_5.html

    http://www.eveliensnel.com/bbs/bulletin/bull_6.html

    These 3 tell you the whole story.
    From writing FTS1 software PC systems who did not keep to the official standard en he had to bypass that with his self written software to exhange mail with FidoNet nodes.
    I think that is much enough proof of it.

    Henri.

    ---
    * Origin: Computing Apart Together (2:280/1208)
  • From Henri Derksen@2:280/1208 to Björn Felten on Wed Jun 5 01:34:00 2019
    Hello Bjorn,

    <http://eveliensnel.com/bbs>

    MvdV>> Hmmm. I waded through a few pages.

    <http://evelinsnel.com/cv>

    MvdV>> "Server not found".

    Since the first server obviously was found, can it be that the second
    link was misspelled and should be:

    http://eveliensnel.com/bbs/

    Yes correct, and sory for my type mismatch.

    BF > Just asking, without really being interested...

    I can not ask you to read only Dutch texts.

    Henri.

    ---
    * Origin: Computing Apart Together (2:280/1208)
  • From Henri Derksen@2:280/1208 to Michiel van der Vlist on Wed Jun 5 01:34:00 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    MvdV>>> So there was a sysop listed by the name of Evert Snel. That does MvdV>>> not prove he ran an operational Fidonet system on an 8 bit
    MvdV>>> machine does it.

    Look here:
    <http://eveliensnel.com/bbs>

    MvdV> Hmmm. I waded through a few pages. Then I gave up. It is 30 Celsius
    MvdV> here. Too hot to spend much time behind the screen.

    I see.

    you unbelievable Thomas.

    MvdV> "Doubting Thomas".

    That may be, my English is not as good as that from mr. Timmermans.

    MvdV> You wil have to live with that. I am a scientist. I am educated
    MvdV> (indoctrinated if you want) with the basic principle of never accepting MvdV> something as fact just because someone says so.

    Normallyn that is a good point of view.

    MvdV> Every scientist should be a "doubting thomas".

    Yes.

    But in this case I was very sure, because I have seen that software tunning
    at de Acorn BBC computer of Simon Voortman at the AcoNet Sysop Meeting in
    1992 at his home in Ouddorp.ZH.NL.

    And also here:
    <http://evelinsnel.com/cv>

    NvdV> "Server not found".

    Sorry, that should be: eveliensnel.com

    Henri.

    ---
    * Origin: Computing Apart Together (2:280/1208)
  • From Henri Derksen@2:280/1208 to Michiel van der Vlist on Wed Jun 5 01:42:00 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    MvdV> I meant what was your point when mentioning the gender change?

    Because she also changed her name.

    MvdV> How is that relevant to the issue that started al this?

    Not everyone would understand that the current Evenlien Snel was the former Evert Snel, so the link would not be made that it was the same person.
    That's why I wrote about that gender change and name change.

    MvdV> Which - if my memory does not fail me -
    MvdV> was the character encoding to be used for Fidonews articles?

    The point was you did not know about the existence of 8 bit fido systems.

    Henri.

    ---
    * Origin: Computing Apart Together (2:280/1208)
  • From Björn Felten@2:203/2 to Henri Derksen on Wed Jun 5 15:49:37 2019
    BF > Just asking, without really being interested...

    I can not ask you to read only Dutch texts.

    Oh, but you can. I can handle Dutch as well as I seem to remember that you do Swedish? 8-)



    ..

    --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to Michiel van der Vlist on Wed Jun 5 21:43:20 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    [..]

    you unbelievable Thomas.

    MvdV> "Doubting Thomas".

    MvdV> You wil have to live with that. I am a scientist. I am educated
    MvdV> (indoctrinated if you want) with the basic principle of never accepting
    MvdV> something as fact just because someone says so.

    MvdV> Every scientist should be a "doubting thomas".

    After reading the gospel accounts (as given in the holy book),
    it is clear that none of the apostles believed their beloved had
    come back from the dead. All of them, including Thomas, had to
    be shown.

    To remove doubt would be to do without belief. Which would be
    a travesty, because that is not the way the world works, or the
    world beyond.

    How can one know the facts without belief?

    Belief in science (scientism) can be viewed as a very peculiar
    modern form of autocratic religious zealotry. Wouldn't you agree?

    Do you, as a scientist, consider yourself as being an autocratic
    religious zealot? Many scientists consider themselves as being
    masters of the universe. With only their own peculiar worldview
    being the One True Religion.

    In my view, every scientist should alter their own version of
    reality to that of Non-Objective Reality. After all, nobody can
    be truly objective, unless he/she is The One.

    And also here:
    <http://evelinsnel.com/cv>

    MvdV> "Server not found".

    "Body not found".

    --Doubting Lee

    --
    Your Hole Is Our Goal

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Henri Derksen on Wed Jun 5 22:33:57 2019
    Hello Henri,

    On Wednesday June 05 2019 01:34, you wrote to me:

    you unbelievable Thomas.

    MvdV>> "Doubting Thomas".

    That may be, my English is not as good as that from mr. Timmermans.

    Neither is mine, I do not practise enough. I had to get help from Google translate and Wikipedia. I knew that "unbelievable Thomas" wasn't right though. "unbelievable Thomas" would be "ongelofelijke Tomas", not "ongelovige Tomas".

    MvdV>> You wil have to live with that. I am a scientist. I am educated
    MvdV>> (indoctrinated if you want) with the basic principle of never
    MvdV>> accepting something as fact just because someone says so.

    Normallyn that is a good point of view.

    Always a good starting point...

    MvdV>> Every scientist should be a "doubting thomas".

    Yes.

    So we agree on that.

    But in this case I was very sure,

    So was Klaas Dijkstra when I met him in the mid sixties. I would not be surprised if there are still some followers of his around, but in the sixties we had an official "flat earth society". "platte aarde vereniging", in The Netherlands. Klaas Dijkstra was the chairman. We - the physics student society- once inivited him fo a lecture, very entertaining. ;-)

    because I have seen that software tunning at de Acorn BBC computer of

    Klaas Dijkstra also claimed he had seen for himself that the earth is flat. Having lived in Friesland myself, I am not all that suprised. It *does* look awfully flat there...

    Sorry Henri, I was indoctrinated with: "never accept anything as fact just because someone says so". No exception for people who say they are very sure... :-)

    Simon Voortman at the AcoNet Sysop Meeting in 1992 at his home in Ouddorp.ZH.NL.

    OK...

    And also here:
    <http://evelinsnel.com/cv>

    NvdV>> "Server not found".

    Sorry, that should be: eveliensnel.com

    Yeah, I got thet now...


    Cheers, Michiel

    --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20170303
    * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)
  • From Jeff Smith@2:250/1 to Michiel Van Der Vlist on Tue Jun 4 06:06:52 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    According to the Weather buro the minimum temerature was -0.1 deg C
    and the max was 5.2 deg C
    If there is something in my blood it is ethylene-glycol, as not all
    rooms were heated.
    Your turn. ;)

    I know when and where I was born. I am not nosy enough to spend time to find out what the weather was then and there.

    I was born in Minneapolis at 12:03 am during a severe thunderstorm. The temp was around 78F or 25C. I have liked and been fascinated with non destructive severe storms ever since. As an adult I have become a severe weather spotter for the NWS (National Weather Service) here in the US.


    Jeff

    --- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-4
    * Origin: Fidoneet: The Ouija Board - Anoka, MN -bbs.ouijabrd.net
  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Henri Derksen on Thu Jun 6 14:26:58 2019
    Hello Henri,

    On Wednesday June 05 2019 01:58, you wrote to me:

    You can write e'e'n in stead, no special apostrophes needed ;-).

    MvdV>> I can, but it looks awfull.

    I donot care for that very few occasion.

    But I do. And other readers may as well. Displeasing the readers of your writings may make them use the "next key" next time.

    MvdV>> Plus that if I need to encase it in quotes,
    MvdV>> reading becomes a parsing contest: 'e'e'n'. Can you parse
    MvdV>> "'e'e'n'"?

    Why should it be enclosed in quotes?

    To differentiate between text quoted form someone else and one's own text of course/

    Toen ik hem vroeg hoeveel, was zijn antwoord: "e'e'n rookgordijn".

    Toen ik hem vroeg hoeveel, was zijn antwoord een rookgordijn.

    You can write Ro"el, no special apostrophes needed ;-).

    MvdV>> I can write it. In the sense that with some effort I can push
    MvdV>> the required keys in my keyboard.

    And I have problems to find the right keys for that High ASCII
    character I seldom use.

    1) "High ASCII" is a misnomer. Characters outside the range specified by ASCII are not an alternate flavour of ASCII. Ther are not Red Ascii, not Blue ASCII, not Left ASCII, not Right ASCII, not low ASCII and not High ASCII.

    2) Just install the proper keyboard and display drivers. Even under DOS this is very easy. Here it woks exactly as the old typewriters with dead keys for the accents and tremas. Very easy.

    Besides that, on many machines it is something else for that
    character, no thanks. Almost no keyboard is the same ;-(.

    That is what keyboard drivers were invented for: to MAKE then the same. All the keyboards here in my house are the same. That keyboards in another country may look different do no affect me.

    MvdV>> But when I see "Ro"el" I have to think very hard to extract the
    MvdV>> meaning. Plus that search algoritms will not work with this
    MvdV>> encoding.

    That's just a much better privacy lock ;-).

    Huh?

    MvdV>> Googling "Ro‰l" and "Ro"el" give very different results.

    You opposed not te be found by Google.

    Not for everything. I do not want to share everything with everyone. Does not mean I want NOTHING to be found.

    At the basis school I learned that the trema means a split before
    the character it is placed on. So Ro"el is correct and Roe"l is
    wrong.

    MvdV>> So you say. But my guess is that that is just your opinion and
    MvdV>> not fact learned at school.

    It was explicitely explained where the word should be splitted,
    i.e. before the letter with the trema on it.

    Be that as it may be, I don't think you were taught the alternative spelling of Ro"e...

    Sorry, I have never seen it spelled as "Ro"el" anywhere, Always as "Ro‰l".

    MvdV>> When I learned to read at school there were no computers ans
    MvdV>> ASCII did not exist yet.

    That has nothing to do with it. The trema is needed to split the pronounciation between the two vowels, you normally speach out as one sound.

    Exactly! The trema is NEEDED!. It is not just a fad, it is needed to properly express what one wants to say. You can not just dispense with them without losing information.

    MvdV>> Dutch typewrites could deal witg accents and tremas in the
    MvdV>> proper way. Encodeing ano with trema as the sequence ""o" or
    MvdV>> "o"" was totally unheard of.

    Of course no one wrote the trema before a letter, but just above.

    So why sould I do it different just because I now use a computer instead of an antique machanical typewriter?

    The Duth "y with dots are mostly spelled as two characters "ij"

    MvdV>> That is not how I learned it in elementary school. On
    MvdV>> Roggeveen's "Aap, noot mies" leesplankje yje "ij" in "Gijs" was
    MvdV>> one letter:

    MvdV>> https://www.knutselstore.nl/diamond-painting/diamond-painting-aa
    MvdV>> p-noot- mies-40x60/

    I have never seen that at our schools.

    Really? Were they gone that soon?

    MvdV>> And that is how I learned to write it. ONE letter, written
    MvdV>> without lifting the pen from the paper.

    We also learned to write the y in two letters without lifting the pen
    from the paper.

    If the pen was not lifted from the paer in what way was the writing different from writing it as one letter?

    I only saw that single character after I left my 5 schools I have been
    on.

    Changing school that often seems to not have learned you more...

    MvdV>> Writing it as a the digraph 'ij' was a consession to
    MvdV>> internationalisation when the market was flooded with
    MvdV>> foreign typewriters not supporting the Dutch concatenated 'ij'

    My Swiss made typewriter Hermes 3000 from 1975 indeed does not have.

    Of couse. The concatenated ij is not part of any of the four Swiss kanguages. But you were born and raised in The Netherlands were you? Ans so most of your writinhs wre in Dutch wereb;t they? So why did you buy a Swiss typewriter instaed of a good solid Dutch one? Buy local remember?

    MvdV>> Yet there are EU countries were Cyrillic is the alfabet for the
    MvdV>> native Language. North Macedonia and Bulgaria come to mind. It
    MvdV>> is not all that far. You can het there in your own car without
    MvdV>> needing a passport.

    I have not the energy for to learn.

    MvdV>> Pity. But you can't block the rest of Fidonet just because of
    MvdV>> that...

    You are also going to learn at least the 2000 characters in Chinese or Japanes, Thay etc.?

    We are discussing character sets in Fidonet. Presently there are no Chinese or Japanese participants in Fidonet. But there are a lot of Russians...

    MvdV>>>> Bj”rn is right. The 26 letters of the ASCII character set are
    MvdV>>>> not enough to properly express oneself in writing. Even for
    MvdV>>>> the Brittish it is not enough . No pound sign 'œ' in ASCII...

    You can write UKP for it, no special sign needed ;-).

    The problem with thse acronyms is that they are seldom unique.

    Every body will understand the term: this costs UKP 2.000,00

    Are you sure? Will every body (sic!) understand this mixed representation? How much is it really? "two" or "two thousand"? "2.000,0" is not a well formed decimal expression in the Anglosaxon world. So why should one lay the link with the Pound Sterling"

    "Everyone" understands 'œ'. Not everyone understands "UKP".

    MvdV>> No excuse..

    You can not ask everyone to learn everything.

    But you want me to learn your exotic alternate spelling of accents, umlauts and tremas...


    Cheers, Michiel

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  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Henri Derksen on Thu Jun 6 15:46:59 2019
    Hello Henri,

    On Wednesday June 05 2019 01:28, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> A wild goose chase. There is nothing there regarding any Fidonet
    MvdV>> node (s)he supposedly ran. Somebody wasted my valuable time.

    Then you did not read the right links:

    The "wild goose chase" referred to the link to the CV.

    http://www.eveliensnel.com/bbs/bulletin/bull_3.html

    http://www.eveliensnel.com/bbs/bulletin/bull_5.html

    http://www.eveliensnel.com/bbs/bulletin/bull_6.html

    These 3 tell you the whole story.
    From writing FTS1 software PC systems who did not keep to the official standard en he had to bypass that with his self written software

    Of course we have only HIS word that the problems were due to OTHERS not following standards. It is not the first time in the history of Fdioet that such claims were made..

    to exhange mail with FidoNet nodes. I think that is much enough proof
    of it.

    I did read that part. Folowed by: "he gave up". So what does that prove?

    No, I am not going to wade through it again. Next time please just don't give 20 pages to wade through, give the exact paragraph(s) where to look, instead of having to read all the babble..


    Cheers, Michiel

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  • From Michiel van der Vlist@2:280/5555 to Henri Derksen on Thu Jun 6 15:42:44 2019
    Hello Henri,

    On Wednesday June 05 2019 01:42, you wrote to me:

    MvdV>> Which - if my memory does not fail me -
    MvdV>> was the character encoding to be used for Fidonews articles?

    The point was you did not know about the existence of 8 bit fido
    systems.

    You should have directed it to Bj"orn. He was the one claiming that "Fidonet was and always has been a DOS based".


    Cheers, Michiel

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  • From Henri Derksen@2:280/1208 to Michiel van der Vlist on Fri Jun 7 15:59:00 2019
    Hello Michiel,

    MvdV>>> A wild goose chase. There is nothing there regarding any Fidonet MvdV>>> node (s)he supposedly ran. Somebody wasted my valuable time.

    Then you did not read the right links:

    MvdV> The "wild goose chase" referred to the link to the CV.

    That was the second less important link, I made a mistake in it.

    http://www.eveliensnel.com/bbs/bulletin/bull_3.html
    http://www.eveliensnel.com/bbs/bulletin/bull_5.html
    http://www.eveliensnel.com/bbs/bulletin/bull_6.html
    These 3 tell you the whole story.
    From writing FTS1 software PC systems who did not keep to the official HD>> standard en he had to bypass that with his self written software

    MvdV> Of course we have only HIS word that the problems were due to OTHERS not MvdV> following standards. It is not the first time in the history of Fdioet MvdV> that such claims were made..

    I know, but I am sure the are software pakackages that do not folluw 100 % exactly the written protocol as defined in the FTSC standaards.
    I.e. one makes it perfectly working at an 80186 machine,
    but at an 80286 machine the timings are different,
    so the time out comes sooner that it does not work anymore the same as before. More ugly is software that does not follow the standard, what often happends when programming bad.

    One programmer writing a Point package for RISC OS wanted to test links with
    my FrontDoor, and he came to the same conclusion that FD did not follow the standard.
    But I also know of errors at the side of that both programmers.
    The second one f.i. deleted a a good working protocol in the next version of his package, for strange reasons.

    to exhange mail with FidoNet nodes. I think that is much enough proof
    of it.

    MvdV> I did read that part.

    MvdV> Folowed by: "he gave up". So what does that prove?

    That he at least has tried to get it working despite not 100 % following the documented protol, but to change it, to get it working.
    He gave up because of political reasons.
    It was a one way love, and that does never hold on for long.
    It does prove he had a working 8 bit fido connection.
    Otherwise he could not exchange mail with his fellow FidoNetters.

    Lateron (s)he accidently deleted his software, and had to write it again.
    Since then it was not FTS0001 compliant anymore ;-(.
    Stupid to no not make backups of such important software created at a long testing period. If only a print out version could also be a backup.
    Typing in is much work, write again from scratch is much more ;-(.

    MvdV> No, I am not going to wade through it again. Next time please just don't MvdV> give 20 pages to wade through, give the exact paragraph(s) where to
    MvdV> look, instead of having to read all the babble..

    Sorry for giving the wrong links in the first time.
    I can ask Simon Voortman if he still has that old 8 bit BBCscan software.
    He is a much better programmer than Evert Snel was.

    Greetings from Henri.

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