[10445] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Re: paean to ascii
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael S. Hart)
Tue Jul 23 20:49:58 1996
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 1996 18:51:04 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Michael S. Hart" <hart@prairienet.org>
In-Reply-To: <v01540b01ae1957053b3a@[129.49.108.63]>
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----------------------------
On Mon, 22 Jul 1996, Michael Silverberg wrote:
> >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
My guess is that you either downloaded it from a site other than ours,
or that you loaded into a program that tried to rearrange the book.
If you try the original file, and read it in a program that reads
Plain Vanilla ASCII, the pages look just fine. Try wide margins,
and use the cr/lfs that are in the file.
Warning: you MIGHT be using a program that undoes some of these
things without telling you. . .one of the risks of using GUI's--
you rarely, if ever, know if you are seeing what is really there.
> 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.
Not sure why anyone would want chapter and section headings,
we go to great pains to take them out, to make the file take
less bandwidth.
>
> 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.
>
Somehow NeXT seemed to get credit for RTF, and it certainly did look cute
on a NeXT machine, but hardly utilitarian. . .the search program couldn't
even find words on the lines you were already looking at.
> 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.
>
I see you agree wholeheartedly with me on extending ASCII further, but can
we do anything to really get it done?
> Whatever the future holds, I hope it's a lot better than plain old ASCII.
>
Me, too.
> (By the way Prof. HART, do you use a colour monitor?)
>
Why? Do you want to know what color I am?
>
Michael S. Hart
>
> Michael
>
> _____________________________________________________________________
> Michael Silverberg, D.Phil michaels@salieri.informatics.sunysb.edu
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