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Re: Around the world with Unicode

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Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> writes:

> Rich <rich@example.invalid>:
> 
>> FWIW, the mutt email client handles decoding quoted printable (and the
>> other potential mime types) automatically, so with at least it there's
>> no need for extra work (and macros) to convert.
> 
> That's how it should be. I don't know what takes place under the
> hood of my car.

A sorry admission.  Do you know how your kidney works?  Or your heart?
How about your your toaster?  The same sorry state cavalierly advised
by Primo Levi's fatuous "young man":

    ...My ideas as to what takes place behind the screen are vague. At
    first contact, this ignorance of mine humiliated me profoundly; a
    young man rushed in to reassure me and he had guided me; and to
    start with he said to me: "You belong to the austere generation of
    humanists who still insist on wanting to understand the world
    around them. This demand has become absurd. Leave everything to
    habit and your discomfort will disappear. Consider do you think
    you know how the telephone and television work. and yet you use
    them everday. And with the exception of a few learned men how many
    know how their hearts and kidneys work?"  [1]

> Why should any user even *know* what ASCII is, let alone demand it?

For the same sort of reason that imbibers should know what coffee is
and be able to demand it instead of a panoply of coffee-like or
coffee-contaning products with French or Italian names.

> What's so special about ASCII?

Lowest common denominator for conveying English text, understood and
correctly interpreted by virtually all software newer than (just
guessing here) 1975.

From Stephenson's The System of the World, Saturn (Peter Hoxton) &
Daniel Waterhouse in Hockley in the Hole:

      "Mechanic since I was a lad, clock-maker since I came to my
      senses," said Saturn.  "The piece of information you are wanting,
      Doctor, is this: this here is an old Hooke balance-spring watch,
      this is. When the Master made it, why, it might've been the best
      time-piece ever fashioned by human hands. But now there's a score
      of proper horologists round Clerkenwell who can make ones that'll
      keep better time. Technology ages, dunnit"?

      Daniel pursed his lips to keep from laughing at the spectacle of
      this new, five-guinea word, Technology, emerging from that head.

      "It ages faster'n we do. It can be difficult for a bloke to keep
      up."

      "Is that your story, Saturn? You could not keep up, and so you
      went bad"?

      "I grew weary of keeping up, Doctor. That is my story, if you must
      know. I grew weary of transitory knowledge, and decided to seek
      knowledge of a more aeternal nature."

Why should I be compelled to "keep up" with technology that doesn't
serve me?  A similar argument emerges from the growing presence of web
"pages" that consist entirely of javascipt and style sheets.  In order
to read the target document, you must have a recent browser that
will corerectly execute a recent version of js & style to construct
the doc for you amongst superfluous fripperies and chrome.

My electric toaster is 104 years old and works fine.  I buy unsliced
bread from a local bakery but happily, even pre-sliced bread does not
come in a format that will only work in a toaster less than, say, 2
years old.  (Oh, fuvg, I've just given bakers^H^H^H^H^H^H the
processed food industry ideas.)


[1] http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/alien/austere.html

-- 
Mike Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada

Member 2341, Austere Generation of Humanists

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Thread

Around the world with Unicode RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2017-12-04 13:34 -0500
  Re: Around the world with Unicode Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2017-12-04 21:30 +0000
  Re: Around the world with Unicode Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2017-12-04 23:53 +0200
    Re: Around the world with Unicode Bruce Horrocks <07.013@scorecrow.com> - 2017-12-05 00:14 +0000
      Re: Around the world with Unicode Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2017-12-05 09:07 +0200
        Re: Around the world with Unicode Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2017-12-05 10:58 +0000
          Re: Around the world with Unicode Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2017-12-05 13:24 +0200
            Re: Around the world with Unicode Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2017-12-05 12:46 +0000
              Re: Around the world with Unicode Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2017-12-05 15:28 +0200
                Re: Around the world with Unicode Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2017-12-05 18:10 +0000
  Re: Around the world with Unicode Roger Blake <rogblake@iname.invalid> - 2017-12-06 03:48 +0000
    Re: Around the world with Unicode Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2017-12-06 02:19 -0400
      Re: Around the world with Unicode Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2017-12-06 09:31 +0200
      Re: Around the world with Unicode Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2017-12-06 11:25 +0000
        Re: Around the world with Unicode Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2017-12-06 15:25 +0200
          Re: Around the world with Unicode "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> - 2017-12-06 18:32 +0000
            Re: Around the world with Unicode Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2017-12-07 00:22 +0200
              Re: Around the world with Unicode Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2017-12-06 19:57 -0400
          Re: Around the world with Unicode Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2017-12-06 18:43 +0000
            Re: Around the world with Unicode Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2017-12-06 20:49 +0100
            Re: Around the world with Unicode Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2017-12-07 00:25 +0200
              Re: Around the world with Unicode scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2017-12-06 22:56 +0000
              Re: Around the world with Unicode Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2017-12-06 22:57 +0000
          Re: Around the world with Unicode Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2017-12-06 19:48 -0400
            Re: Around the world with Unicode Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2017-12-07 10:02 +0200
              Re: Around the world with Unicode Roger Blake <rogblake@iname.invalid> - 2017-12-07 16:54 +0000
                Re: Around the world with Unicode Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2017-12-07 14:55 -0400
              Re: Around the world with Unicode Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2017-12-07 14:43 -0400
                Re: Around the world with Unicode Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2017-12-07 21:09 +0200
                Re: Around the world with Unicode The Real Bev <bashley101@gmail.com> - 2017-12-07 11:48 -0800
                Re: Around the world with Unicode Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2017-12-08 00:43 -0400

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