.TH CHARSET 5 "Miscellaneous Information" 
.SH NAME
charset - Description of HERMES character set policies
.SH DESCRIPTION
All HERMES software supports the extended 8-bit character set known
as "Latin 1" or "ISO 8859-1", provided the character concerned is
available in both ISO 8859-1 and the Atari ST character set.
.sp
HERMES consideres all text files it deals with to be either in the "user"
or in the "net" domain. User domain files have (as a rule) CRLF-terminated
lines, and all 8-bit characters are from the Atari ST native character set.
Net domain files have LF-terminated lines, and all 8-bit characters are
from the ISO 8859-1 character set.
.sp
ISO 8859-1 reserves the character range from 0200 to 0240 (octal) for
control characters. Since many of the most often used Atari ST special
characters are in this range, net-domain file characers from this range
are not converted. The idea is that net-domain files with Atari ST
(or PC) special characters will be correctly displayed.
.sp
All files that are either received from or transmitted to other systems are
in the net domain. When reading mails or news articles, the text is
converted to a user domain file.
.sp
When you submit a user domain text file to HERMES, it is converted to a
net domain file. The net (pun intended) result is that your site
appears as using the ISO character set to the outside world, while you can use
your favourite text editor and write special characters using the ST set.
All this happens transparently to you as a user.
.sp
The boundary between the user and net domains separates all files HERMES
programs write for their own use (that includes mailbox files and news
articles in the news tree) from all files HERMES programs write for your
use (e. g., when saving mail messages or news articles to files out of
.I gus(1)
viewing windows). Remember not to mess with net domain files unless you
you what you are doing!
.sp
Some files (like the xhosts and news.def files) cannot be identified as
either user or net domain files. Such files should not contain any
8-bit characters, and can have either CRLF- or LF-terminated lines (as
user domain files can in general, as far as HERMES is concerned).
.SH BUGS
All characters in either character set that are not present in the other are
mapped to "default" characters. If you receive a mail that contains such
characters, and reply to it, all quoted text in your reply has undergone
a double conversion, thus munging all ISO characters that are not present
in the ST charcater set.
