[10434] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Re: paean to ascii
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael Silverberg)
Mon Jul 22 20:19:00 1996
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 1996 18:43:24 -0500 (CDT)
From: Michael Silverberg <michaels@salieri.informatics.sunysb.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>If you want unlimited distribution, the only, at present, way to do a
>good job of it is to use just plain ASCII, just like in this email.
>
>.........
>There is only one real argument here. . .
>
>Elitist or Utilitarian. . .
>
I should like to relate my experience with Prof. Hart's favourite form of
computer communication. I downloaded Bruce Sterling's "The Hacker
Crackdown" from the Gutenberg project, in plain ASCII of course. It was
basically unreadable in that form and I spent a good couple of hours
formatting it with chapter and section headings beofre printing out a
readable form. Truthfully, the $7 or $8 a paperback would have cost would
have been worth it! Plain vanilla ASCII is just not adequate for more than
a short message in English with no foreign or borrowed words.
One could argure about the way to go forward. PDF is one way but I don't
think the power of the owner has much to do with it - it's interesting
that even the mighty Microsoft did not seem to be able to get RTF
established - perhaps because you can't read it.
I believe that a universally adopted extended ASCII with all the basic
diacritical marks and printing punctuation is long overdue. I know when I
first used a Mac, the ability to use real typographical quotes and real
em-dashes was a thrill and every time I see a printed or word processed
piece with "--" I cringe. Perhaps Unicode will come to the rescue. An
extended alphabet still leaves out italic, bold etc. but perhaps some of
the unused codes at the beginning of the ASCII sequence could be used.
Whatever the future holds, I hope it's a lot better than plain old ASCII.
(By the way Prof. HART, do you use a colour monitor?)
Michael
_____________________________________________________________________
Michael Silverberg, D.Phil michaels@salieri.informatics.sunysb.edu
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