


CHARSET (5)            Miscellaneous Information             CHARSET (5)







NAME  

        charset - Description of HERMES character set policies 



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.  



        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.  



        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.  



        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.  



        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.  



        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  pgus(1)q viewing

        windows).  Remember not to mess with net domain files unless you 

        you what you are doing!  



        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).  



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





Tue Jan 4 23:21:38 1994                                           Page 1







CHARSET (5)            Miscellaneous Information             CHARSET (5)





        munging all ISO characters  that  are  not  present  in  the  ST

        charcater set.  


























































Tue Jan 4 23:21:38 1994                                           Page 2




