Re: Code Review Guidelines (draft)

! Dave Harman OBC wrote:
! > 
! > ! At 09:58 AM 8/29/96 -0500, Igor wrote:
! > ! >The decision that have just made is not a technical decision, it is 
! > ! >a business decision. You just decided that the needs of security 
! > ! >outweight the need to be able to deal with 100% of potential customers.
! > ! 
! > ! I strongly agree.  You've also potentially annoyed a bunch of Europeans,
! > ! Unicode-speakers, and other users of non-ASCII alphabets.
! > ! Just because the domain name in somebody's address is case-insensitive 
! > ! (and culturally-insensitive :-) ASCII, that doesn't mean their user
! > ! name will be also, especially if their _real_ mail system is some
! > ! ugly proprietary thing like Microso-Cc:PR0FS-HS.400 or if their
! > ! name is Swedish or Chinese.
! > 
! > Agreed, the DNS and other systems should be upgraded to 8bit.
! > Unix should also allow / in file names, it can be escaped somehow.
! 
! It is not possible.

Oh, every value can be escaped, there's no reason that the full 8bit 
range cannot be incorporated throughout every operating system.  It's 
just legacy junk which keeps us putting up restrictions in everything 
that we really don't want.  Ditto for network software.

Dave Harman OBC wrote:
> ! > Agreed, the DNS and other systems should be upgraded to 8bit.
> ! > Unix should also allow / in file names, it can be escaped somehow.
> ! 
> ! It is not possible.
> 
> Oh, every value can be escaped, there's no reason that the full 8bit 
> range cannot be incorporated throughout every operating system.  It's 
> just legacy junk which keeps us putting up restrictions in everything 
> that we really don't want.  Ditto for network software.
> 

It is not possible because all old programs will be broken.

It is also not possible because non-ascii characters have different
meanings in different languages. I mean, words 

ðÏÌÀÂÉÌÁ ÐÁÒÎÑ Ñ,
ïËÁÚÁÌÓÑ ÂÅÚ ÈÕÑ.
îÁ ÈÕÑ ÍÎÅ ÂÅÚ ÈÕÑ, 
ëÏÇÄÁ Ó ÈÕÅÍ ÄÏ ÈÕÑ?

have meaning only to Russian speakers. A German or a Japanese would
never be able to remember a hostname like 
ÄÉÒÅËÃÉÑ.ÍÁÛÚÁ×ÏÄ.ÓÁÒÁÔÏ×.ÒÏÓÓÉÑ,
because in _their_ representation of these characters this text is a 
complete gibberish.

	- Igor.

ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home) writes:
> pOL@BILA PARNQ Q,
> oKAZALSQ BEZ HUQ.
> nA HUQ MNE BEZ HUQ,
> kOGDA S HUEM DO HUQ?

dEWKI W GOSTI PRIGLA[ALI,
dA Q W GOSTI NE PO[EL -
pIDVA^I[KO NA MNE RWANYJ,
dA HUI[KO NEBOLX{OJ.

Decrypt this, Midwestern swines.

---

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps