Re: Way to define character set when doing newspost? LYNX-DEV

[Foteos Macrides]

Hynek Med <address@hidden> wrote:
>On Wed, 18 Jun 1997, H E Nelson wrote:
>
>> The problem is though, if I change the display charset to SJIS,
>> (same as ISO-2022-JP) then the display is so garbled that I can't
>> find my way around, and no amount of ^L or ^W will fix the screen
>> to where I can navigate.  I'll keep playing around.
>
>I understand.. But it's a problem, because at the point you are going to
>mail the content of the page (or post news or just send mail), the
>document is already converted to your display charset, so there's no way
>back.. 

        When you post to a news group, and you are using an editor,
Lynx creates a temporary file which contains a header section you
can (and are expected to) edit in addition to providing a body,
e.g.:

From: address@hidden
Subject: Test
Organization: Worcester Foundation
Newsgroups: to.wfbr2
Summary: 
Keywords: 

You can add a Summary or Keywords (or leave them blank, or delete
them from the header section).  You also can add a Content-Type
header and indicate the charset, if the body will not be:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

There should be no blank lines between header lines, and at least
one blank line between the header section and body.

        Usenet traditionally expects 7-bit, US-ASCII.  For CJK,
ISO-2022-JP meets the 7-bit expectation, and contains only US-ASCII
characters by virtue of using "escape sequences" with only 7-bit,
US-ASCII characters.   EUCs and SJIS are mulitbyte charsets that
include 8-bit bytes in their di-byte pairs (Henry really should,
after all this time, do some reading about the CJK charsets.).

        When reading inputs for display on your screen, Lynx
has functions for converting ISO-2022-JP, EUCs, or SJIS to the
EUC you chose for your display character set (or to SJIS) before
actually putting the characters on your screen.  It has no function
interposed for testing the charset you used and then doing an inverse
transformation for your temporary files when it sends Usenet posts
via a spawned editor.  Lynx simply sends whatever you created (and
modified or added in the header section) with your own editor acting
on the temporary file -- completely external to Lynx.

        If you're posting to Japanese Usenet groups, and you have a
way of calling in ISO-2022-JP for your editor, do that, and add

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-2022-JP

to the header section.

        However, if you are doing a followup, and accept the offer
to include the message you are reading, with "> " prefixed to each
line, Lynx only has what it saved in the HText structure for display
on your screen, i.e., the conversion of that message to an EUC or
SJIS will already have been done, and Lynx presently has no function
interposed for doing a back translation to ISO-2022-JP before putting
it into the temporary file.  I suppose if such functionallity were
added, it should be used after you've finished editing the temporary
file, so it's done for your body as well.

                                Fote

=========================================================================
 Foteos Macrides            Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research
 address@hidden         222 Maple Avenue, Shrewsbury, MA 01545
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