[NNTP] Internationalisation, attempt 2

[Kai Henningsen]

chl at clerew.man.ac.uk (Charles Lindsey)  wrote on 04.05.05 in <IFyo3t.5yq at clerew.man.ac.uk>:

> In <m37jiguv8l.fsf at merlin.emma.line.org> Matthias Andree
> <matthias.andree at gmx.de> writes:
>
> >"Clive D.W. Feather" <clive at demon.net> writes:
>
> >>    As such, it was written on the
> >>    assumption that all communication would be in ASCII and use only a
> >>    7-bit transport layer, although in practice all known implementations
> >>    are 8-bit clean.
>
> >Suggest to replace "all known implementations" by "most known
> >implementations" -- unless you can produce proof you've known all at the
> >time of writing.
>
> No, the present wording is correct. "all known implementations" means all
> implementations known to the collective wisdom of this WG, not all
> implementations that might exist. AFAIK, nobody here is aware of _any_
> implementation without that property.

Make that "any implementation in current use in the global Usenet",  
otherwise it is false.

This came up a few years ago (can't find it in Google[1], though), and  
ISTR that only one or two instances of not-8-bit-clean implementations  
were found to still be in use at that time. I can't name the software in  
question, but again I seem to recall it was definitely known to the old  
guard at that time. Maybe an implementation for some more exotic machine  
like Vax/Vms? IIRC there was doubt that those instances could last much  
longer ...

[1] Though I did find that early versions of B and C News needed patching  
for Japan because they stripped ESC (which kills ISO 2022).

MfG Kai