From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

THE MT VOID
09/04/26 -- Vol. 45, No. 10, Whole Number 2448

Editor: Evelyn Leeper, evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
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Topics:
Money in Time and Space (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE EVERLASTING by Alix E. Harrow (book review
by Joe Karpierz)
2026 Hugo Awards
Milk in Tea (comment by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Art That Does't Age Well (letters of comment
by Richie Bielak and Scott Coltrin)
THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, SILENT MOVIE, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN,
and THE PRODUCERS (letters of comment
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Gary McGath, Scott Dorsey,
and Tim Merrigan)
John Profumo (letters of comment by Hal Heydt
and Paul Dormer)
This Week's Reading (A BASQUE HISTORY OF THE WORLD)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

===================================================================

TOPIC: Money in Time and Space (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

Random notes about money through time and space:

Older Americans (like me) remember when US and Canadian dollars
were equal in value and not only could you spend bills relatively
freely back and forth (at least when you were close to the
border), you could spend coins the same way.

We were on a tour in Europe in 1986 and when we were in the third
country or so, the woman in front of me at the cafeteria we had
stopped at held out a handful of mixed change from all three
countries and asked, "Can I pay with any of this?" The tour bus
had previously stopped somewhere for us to change money; this
woman just threw everything in the same purse and couldn't be
bothered figured out which coins and bills went with which
country. (This is somewhere on the level of the two women on our
China tour, who always wanted forks but couldn't be bothered to
learn how to say that one word in Chinese.)

In 1990 we were in the Amsterdam airport leaving for home, and
Mark was looking at a couple of CDs in one of the shops. When we
left the shop, I asked why he didn't buy them, and he said he
thought we didn't have any Dutch money left. I said no, but we had
a credit card, upon which he immediately pivoted back into the
store.

Back in the early 1990s, I bought a book from a dealer in
Amsterdam. This was before PayPal or even payment online by credit
cards, so I paid Helene-Hanff-style, by mailing them a $10 bill.
The total was $8, but it would have put the weight of the envelope
into the next weight class to send four bills, so I sent them an
extra $2 rather than pay it to the USPS. I figured they could
always take it to a bank to exchange it, and the extra $2 should
cover any fees.

I must remember to take my leftover European money to Montreal for
the Worldcon, in case I can spend it in the Dealers Room with
European vendors. In Edinburgh in 1995, I bought an alternate
history fanzine from a German fan. It was DM8, and since I had
some left-over DM from our stop-over on the way to India, I gave
him DM10, getting 90p change. Thus is international finance
carried out at conventions.

In 1990 the exchange rate in Hong Kong was approximately HKD8 to
US$1. At one of the tourist attractions there a woman who was
selling a pack of post cards for "a dollar," but when Mark offered
her a Hong Kong dollar, it turned out she meant a United States
dollar. This hardly seemed reasonable, but I guess she figured
Americans couldn't deal with the concept of Hong Kong dollars. We
didn't buy the cards.

But this proves that some vendors outside the US take US dollars,
or did. This is much less common in (western) Europe. But
elsewhere things are different.

For example, in Yugoslavia in 1991, the last thing anyone wanted
was Yugoslav dinars. Similarly, in 2012 in Zimbabwe they weren't
even dealing in Zimbabwe dollars any more, though they tended to
prefer South African rand to US dollars. (If you paid in US
dollars, you might still get your change in South African rand, or
sometimes in candy or other small items.) And the US dollars had
to be 2001 or later, and not torn.

Money in India in 1993 was ... weird. As Mark described it in our
log, "Indian money is a trip all by itself. The books say to
change a fair amount each time because it takes so long in most
banks, but what they don't say is that you end up with a *huge*
wad of money. At the current rate, thirty-one rupees is one United
States dollar. A rupee is about three cents. The biggest bill you
generally see is Rs100. Imagine commerce in the United States if
there were no bills worth more than US$3. You don't have to be
very rich to sport a wad of bills that would choke a horse. We
changed US$500. That means we got a lot of bills. They staple them
together in stacks of a hundred about a half an inch thick. Then
you have to remove the staples and a torn bill will probably be
refused. It is a very big mess removing the staples. It took
Evelyn almost a half hour to remove the multiple staples from one
batch we got."

And there is the travel hint (sorry, I guess "hack" is the word
now) of using your remaining local currency on the last day to pay
part of your hotel bill and use your credit card for the rest.
This has the advantage of saving standing in line at the airport
to change your money back. Just be sure you have a way to pay for
the ride back to the airport!

Our other hack when we went with three friends to Southeast Asia
in 1990 was that one of us would change out remaining money for
the country we were leaving (A) for the one we were going to (B).
Since coins are not legal tender outside of their issuing country
(though see Canada above) that person would get bills for country
B and the leftover in coins for country A. They would hand the
coins to the second person in our group, who would add them to
their money and change that. And so on. This meant we ended up
with very little in coins from country A. (No one was big on
collecting souvenir coins for their nephew or whatever.)

And finally, I just noticed that of the new coins for the
semiquincentennial, only one has Washington on the front
(Revolutionary War). One has two Pilgrims (Mayflower Compact), one
has Jefferson (Declaration of Independence), one has Adams (the
Constitution), and one has Lincoln (Gettysburg Address). The
Mayflower Compact, Revolutionary War, and Gettysburg Address also
have, for the first time, the value in digits (25c). The other two
still say only "quarter dollar"--I have no idea why. ChatGPT says
that the Constitution one has the clock in the tower set to
2:50--but that's not 25, and it later says that represents the semiquincentennial. When pressed further about "25 cents" it
claims that no US quarter has the denomination printed in
digits--clearly not true. [-ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: THE EVERLASTING by Alix E. Harrow (copyright 2025,
Macmillan Audio, 13 hours and 41 minutes, narrated by Moira Quirk
and Sid Sagar, ASIN: B0F1DSGT76; Tor books, 320 pp., hardcover,
ISBN-10: 1250799082, ISBN-13: 978-1250799081) (book review by Joe
Karpierz)

Who knew that we needed a semi-Arthurian time travel love story
between a soldier turned historian-scholar and a mythical knight
who helped forge the country called Dominion? I sure didn't. Alix
E. Harrow's THE EVERLASTING quickly informed me that I did indeed
need those very things.

Owen Mallory has come home from the war, and decides to try to
become a scholar. His specialty will be the study of Sir Una
Everlasting, the knight from deep in Dominion's past who, along
with Queen Yvanne, built the country that Owen fought for in the
war. The Owen that we meet at the beginning of the story has
pretty much failed at everything he has tried. He wasn't a very
good soldier--although he did have one skill that will turn out to
be useful throughout the novel--or scholar. His colleagues
ridicule him for his choice of study, as they all believe that
there is nothing more to learn about Una, and in fact most of what
is known is most likely a myth written to entertain children and
convince them they all want to be heroic countrymen. He is even a disappointment to his father, who does not approve of his life
choices.

But Mallory plods on, and one day, via a stroke of luck, a copy of
a rare book--again thought to be mythical--detailing the death of
Una Everlasting shows up on his desk. He's been hoping it would
show up, as he wants to expand Una's story and provide depth to
the character, ultimately telling the true story of Una. His
colleagues think the book is rubbish, that it can't say any more
about Una than what is already known. Possession of the book leads
him to meet with Vivian Rolfe, Dominion's new Minister of War. And
that, really, is where the story really begins.

It is said that one should never meet one's heroes, as this way
typically leads to disappointment. What Mallory, and all of
Dominion knows, is that Una Everlasting pulled the sword Valiance
from a yew tree, used it to slay the last dragon, and recover the
lost Grail. The real story, the story that Mallory really wanted
to know, is much more involved than that. Oh, those events did
happen, but as we find out as the novel progresses, Una is a much
deeper and unhappier character than the legends say she is. She is
devoted to the Queen, who is ambitious, repressive, and not really
the Queen the stories make her out to be. All of this changes with
the arrival of Owen in her time. Earlier I did say there would be
time travel involved, and a love story, and here we are (and how
the time travel works ventures into the realm of spoilers, but I
will say that there are revelations throughout the novel about the
mechanics of how it works that I found somewhat ingenious and
interesting). Owen does not travel back to Una's time just once,
but several times, and each time their love for each other grows
deeper as they try to change Una's story to something more
satisfying. For the mythical book that started this whole thing is
entitled "The Death of Una Everlasting", and why wouldn't you want
to change that outcome?

So yes, this is indeed a semi-Arthurian (I mean, the sword was
pulled from a magical tree and made Una a legendary hero, and the
story does take place in an England-like country) time travel
(Owen is a man out of time, and he basically has to go back
multiple times to get things right. Does that make him a failure
for taking so many trips, thus paralleling his failures in his own
time?) love story (although I don't think it's too often that one
main character meets his hero and falls in love with her) between
a scholar and a mythical knight. But it is so much more than that.

It's a tale of just how far someone will go to gain power and hang
on to it--forever, it seems. I've listened to Harrow talk about
the book on a podcast, and I've read a few things about it, but I
never ran across anything that indicated just when it was written.
But it sure seems like she saw coming what is happening in today's
political climate, not only in the U.S. but all over the world.
It's another thing you don't see coming until it finally does hit
you over the head with it--over and over and over again. It's also
a love story that survives all the tumult of that power grab, a
story that transcends time (yeah, I know, we've seen that before,
but still). It's a beautifully written story, with wonderful
characters that Harrow makes the reader care deeply about. The
reader wants to see how it ends, and hopes it ends well. But don't
all fairy tales end with "and they lived happily ever after"?
After everything that Owen and Una have gone through, you
certainly hope they do. I know I did.

I highly recommend THE EVERLASTING, and I can see it winning this
year's Hugo Award for Best Novel. In my opinion it's in a tight
race with two other of the finalists this year, so it will be
interesting to see what happens. [-jak]

[Evelyn notes: It won. See below. -ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: 2026 Hugo Awards

Best Novel: THE EVERLASTING by Alix E. Harrow
Best Novella: THE RIVER HAS ROOTS by Amal El-Mohtar
Best Novelette: "Never Eaten Vegetables" by H.H. Pak
(Clarkesworld, Issue 220)
Best Short Story: "In My Country" by Thomas Ha
(Clarkesworld, Issue 223)
Best Series: "Old Man's War" by John Scalzi
Best Graphic Story or Comic: A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA: A GRAPHIC
NOVEL, written by Ursula K. Le Guin,
adapted and art by Fred Fordham
Best Related Work: INVENTING THE RENAISSANCE by Ada Palmer
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: SINNERS
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: MURDERBOT: "All Systems
Red"
Best Game or Interactive Work: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Best Editor Short Form: Neil Clarke
Best Editor Long Form: Diana M. Pho
Best Professional Artist: John Picacio
Best Semiprozine: Uncanny Magazine
Best Fanzine: nerds of a feather, flock together
Best Fancast: Hugo, Girl!
Best Fan Writer: Jason Sanford
Best Fan Artist: Yuumei
Best Poem: "Hex Supply Customer Support Log" by Elis Montgomery
(Strange Horizons, Issue 25 August 2025)
Lodestar Award for Best YA Book: COFFEESHOP IN AN ALTERNATE
UNIVERSE by C.B. Lee
Astounding Award for Best New Writer (sponsored by Must Read Books
Publishing): Antonia Hodgson (1st year of eligibility)

(2492 ballots were cast)

===================================================================

TOPIC: Milk in Tea (comment by Evelyn C. Leeper)

There was an on-line discussion that led to the question of which
goes in the cup first: the tea or the milk?

One site says, "However, scientifically speaking, putting the milk
in your cup first, allows the fat content of the milk to emulsify
differently when the tea is poured over it, which gives the tea a
more even and creamier flavour."

Another says, "... pouring milk after hot tea preserves flavor and
texture."

And a third explains the (possible) origin:

"The practice of adding milk first is believed to have originated
to prevent china cups from cracking due to thermal shock from hot
tea. However, this theory is largely considered incorrect today,
as modern porcelain is robust enough to handle hot liquids."

The lower class had cheap porcelain cups that would crack, while
the upper class had expensive bone china cups that would not. This
meant milk first was an lower-class thing, and tea first a
upper-class thing.

This showed up in GOSFORD PARK, which was reviewed in the 08/14/26
issue of the MT VOID. In the tea scene, Inspector Thomson starts
to pour the milk in first, but Lady Sylvia stops him and says she
prefers the tea first. Thomson complies, but notes that his wife
prefers the milk first, thereby marking her as lower-class. [-ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: Art That Does't Age Well (letters of comment by Richie
Bielak and Scott Coltrin)

In response to Evelyn's comments on songs that don't age well in
the 08/28/26 issue of the MT VOID, Richie Bielak writes:

Regarding songs that may have different interpretations today: "On
the Street Where You Live", from "My Fair Lady", could be by a guy
in love, or a stalker. :-) [-rb]

Steve Coltrin gave this example in books:

"On the surface, she was a lovely young woman, certainly as
beautiful as Taniquel, but as sexless as a child of seven or
eight. Rannirl had said something about ritual virginity--and
Elorie was certainly as unconscious of her own beauty and
desirability as the youngest, most unaware of children. Or more
so; most little girls, by eight or nine, were quite aware of their
own femininity and one could see in them the seeds of
desirability. Elorie, somehow, seemed entirely unaware of her own
womanhood." -Marion Zimmer Bradley, THE BLOODY SUN (quoted
material added in the 1979 rewrite)

In 1979? Wut. Today (particularly with what is now more generally
known about the author)? *Yeesh!* [-sc]

===================================================================

TOPIC: THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, SILENT MOVIE, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN,
and THE PRODUCERS (letters of comment by Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Gary
McGath, Scott Dorsey, and Tim Merrigan)

In response to Evelyn's comments on various films in the 08/28/26
issue of the MT VOID, Lawrence D'Oliveiro writes:

[Evelyn writes,] "THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN was terrifically
influential, being referenced directly in 105 feature films, 57 TV
episodes, and 13 TV movies, not counting videos, shorts, and
probably ads as well." [-ecl]

... baby pram careening down the Odessa Steps ... [-ldo]

Evelyn adds:

Also the scene with the eyeglasses. [-ecl]

[re SILENT MOVIE]

And it did have one word of actual dialogue ... spoken by, of all
people, Marcel Marceau.

(Trivia question: what language was that word in?) [-ldo]

Gary McGath replies:

I don't know. I don't speak French. [-gmg]

Lawrence responds:

Well played. [-ldo]

Scott Dorsey also responded to Gary:

But for my part, 'twas Gr... French to me. [-sd]

Tim Merrigan gives a more straightforward answer:

French: "Non." which, unless one is listening closely, when spoken
in a French accent, sounds a whole lot like "no" in English or
Spanish. [-tm]

[re YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN]

Another classic, featuring one of the two terrifyingly memorable
roles for Cloris Leachman in a Brooks movie. And Marty Feldman,
yet. [-ldo]

[re THE PRODUCERS]

In the beginning, there was "The Producers", the movie <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063462/>, about the making of the
fictional musical "Springtime for Hitler". Then it was made into an
actual stage musical. And from there into another movie <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0395251/>. [-ldo]

===================================================================

TOPIC: John Profumo (letters of comment by Hal Heydt and Paul
Dormer)

In response to Evelyn's comments on GIGI in the 08/28/26 issue of
the MT VOID, Hal Heydt writes:

[Evelyn writes,] "(For those old enough to remember Christine
Keeler, I think that makes her a courtesan.)" [-ecl]

After the [John] Profumo scandal, a joke went around.
Unfortunately, it works better verbally because it uses a homonym,
but still...

Did you hear that Christine Keeler tried to commit suicide?

She was found lying under a peer/pier. [-hh]

Paul Dormer notes:

I was ten at the time the scandal broke and I kept hearing the
name Christine Keeler, but it was about ten years before I found
out what it was about. [-pd]

Hal adds:

The other name that goes with the Profumo scandal was Mandy Rice
Davies. [-hh]

And Paul adds another name:

As does Stephen Ward.

When I started work in 1973, I shared an office with someone
called Stuart Ward. People would occasionally get confused and
call him Stephen.

Ward's trial began on my 10th birthday. I don't remember hearing
anything about it at the time. It was at that trial Mandy
Rice-Davies uttered the famous line "Well he would, wouldn't he?"
[-pd]

Evelyn observes:

Profumo managed to redeem himself enough to be made a CBE thirteen
years later. Mandy Rice-Davies also managed to recover from the
scandal, but Christine Keeler did not, accusing someone of
assault. He committed suicide before the verdict was given, and
then witnesses came forward to testify that Keeler had lied. She
served six months in prison, and basically disappeared from public
view afterwards. [-ecl]

===================================================================

TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

A BASQUE HISTORY OF THE WORLD by Mark Kurlansky (Penguin, ISBN 978-0-140-29851-2) is more a Basque history of the Basque Country
(Euskal Herria) than a history of the world from a Basque
perspective. While it does talk about other areas (in particular
Spain and France, obviously), these are all in connections with
Euskal Herria. For example, China is mentioned only as a place
that started manufacturing cheap espadrilles, which affected the
Basque economy. It also has a lot of recipes.

Kurlansky claims that "honcho" derives from the Basque word
"jauntxo" (a powerful rural landlord). Every other
source--including the OED-- claims "honcho" comes from the
Japanese "hancho" and was picked up by American soldiers after
World War II. This may be an occasion where Kurlansky's enthusiasm
for things Basque has gotten away from him.

Also claimed (not by Kurlansky) to be of Basque origin is
"bizarre" which came from Italian via French. "Chaparral" does
seem to be of Basque origin, coming from "txapar" meaning "little
thicket". And "silhouette" comes from the proper name
"silhouette", which is believed to have Basque origins. "Anchovy"
may be of Greek, Latin, Portuguese, or Basque origin.

(Kurlansky refers to the language as Euskera, but that is the
Basque word for it, and seems to me a bit strange, the same as
referring to Francais, Deutsch, or Ellinika, instead of French,
German, or Greek would be.)

This book covers a piece of history usually ignored in most
history books, and is worth reading if you want some history you
haven't heard of before. The one problem is that it is twenty-five
years old, so gives you no information about the current state of
Basque separatism. In particular, it does not cover the end of the fifty-two-year-long Basque Conflict in 2011 (thought the ETA did
not formally dissolve until 2016). [-ecl]

===================================================================

Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com


The first 90% of the code accounts for the first
90% of the development time.
The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other
90% of the development time.

--Tom Cargill

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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On 9/6/26 9:18 AM, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:

Older Americans (like me) remember when US and Canadian dollars
were equal in value and not only could you spend bills relatively
freely back and forth (at least when you were close to the
border), you could spend coins the same way.

I can remember having to explain to a cashier why I didn't want a
Canadian dime in my change. Canadian coins once turned up fairly often
in New Hampshire, though they're much less common now.

I must remember to take my leftover European money to Montreal for
the Worldcon, in case I can spend it in the Dealers Room with
European vendors. In Edinburgh in 1995, I bought an alternate
history fanzine from a German fan. It was DM8, and since I had
some left-over DM from our stop-over on the way to India, I gave
him DM10, getting 90p change. Thus is international finance
carried out at conventions.

Good thought. I should remember to take my Euros to Montreal. I always
have some because of my semi-regular trips to Germany. US money will
also be useful, since undoubtedly many of the dealers will be from the
US (if they can deal with whatever directives on cross-border trade are
in effect then).
--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On Sun, 6 Sep 2026 09:18:42 -0400, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:

(Kurlansky refers to the language as Euskera, but that is the
Basque word for it, and seems to me a bit strange, the same as
referring to Francais, Deutsch, or Ellinika, instead of French,
German, or Greek would be.)

rCLFran|oaisrCY, surely ...

On a related note, the Turks have now decreed that the official name
of their country shall be rCLT|+rkiyerCYrCa. I guess theyrCOre fed up of jokes about the birds what go gobble-gobble ...

The first 90% of the code accounts for the first
90% of the development time.
The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other
90% of the development time.

--Tom Cargill

HererCOs another one:

There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third
one works.

-- Alan Perlis

rCaAdmittedly, IrCOm not sure about the umlaut.
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On 9/6/26 6:15 PM, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Sun, 6 Sep 2026 09:18:42 -0400, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:

(Kurlansky refers to the language as Euskera, but that is the
Basque word for it, and seems to me a bit strange, the same as
referring to Francais, Deutsch, or Ellinika, instead of French,
German, or Greek would be.)

rCLFran|oaisrCY, surely ...

On a related note, the Turks have now decreed that the official name
of their country shall be rCLT|+rkiyerCYrCa. I guess theyrCOre fed up of jokes
about the birds what go gobble-gobble ...

The only trouble is that Usenet readers don't always handle non-ASCII characters well. They look fine for me (Thunderbird on a Mac), but I
suspect some other people will see garbage characters.

As far as I can tell, the second character of the country's name is
Unicode 00FC, the same as u-umlaut. Identical-looking characters in
different languages aren't always the same Unicode character.
--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com> wrote:

On 9/6/26 6:15 PM, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Sun, 6 Sep 2026 09:18:42 -0400, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:

On a related note, the Turks have now decreed that the official name
of their country shall be rCLT|+rkiyerCYrCa. I guess theyrCOre fed up of jokes
about the birds what go gobble-gobble ...

The only trouble is that Usenet readers don't always handle non-ASCII >characters well. They look fine for me (Thunderbird on a Mac), but I
suspect some other people will see garbage characters.

I see garbage characters, but more importantly: the bird was named after
the country. There is a popular domestic bird in the UK which comes from Turkey and is called Turkey Fowl. When the American Turkey was discovered
it was named after that because it seemed vaguely kind of similar.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On Sun, 6 Sep 2026 19:52:04 -0400, Gary McGath wrote:

The only trouble is that Usenet readers don't always handle
non-ASCII characters well.

That must be very old software, is all I can say. Unicode has been
around for about a third of a century now, and is universally
supported across all major computer platforms. Fallback fonts that
give legible renditions for every character (e.g. GooglerCOs rCLNotorCY
series) are freely available. So IrCOm not really sure what the excuse
is, any more.

Identical-looking characters in different languages aren't always
the same Unicode character.

That is a known pitfall, with no easy answer.
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com> wrote:

Lawrence D\377Oliveiro wrote:

\342\200\234Fran\347ais\342\200\235, surely ...

On a related note, the Turks have now decreed
that the official name of their country shall be
\342\200\234T\374rkiye\342\200\235\342\200\240. I guess
they\342\200\231re fed up of jokes about the birds what go
gobble-gobble ...

The only trouble is that Usenet readers don't always handle
non-ASCII characters well. They look fine for me (Thunderbird on a
Mac), but I suspect some other people will see garbage characters.

Indeed. I see lots of octal gibberish. From long experience, I know
that \342\200\234 and \342\200\235 are intended as quote marks, and \342\200\231 is intended as an apostrophe. But I still don't know
what the non-ASCII character in Lawrence's name is supposed to be;
it never seems to be the same character twice. I'm not sure he's
not just trolling us.

Of course quote marks and apostrophes have been part of standard ASCII
since day one. Presumably those variants are intended as left and
right quote marks or whatever, i.e. so-called "smart quotes." The
perfect is the enemy of the good.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On Mon, 7 Sep 2026 02:03:46 -0000 (UTC), Keith F. Lynch wrote:

But I still don't know what the non-ASCII character in Lawrence's
name is supposed to be; it never seems to be the same character
twice. I'm not sure he's not just trolling us.

So your reader is not only buggy, it is not even consistently buggy.

ThatrCOs your fault, not mine.
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

Lawrence D\377Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

Keith F. Lynch wrote:

But I still don't know what the non-ASCII character in Lawrence's
name is supposed to be; it never seems to be the same character
twice. I'm not sure he's not just trolling us.

So your reader is not only buggy, it is not even consistently buggy. That\342\200\231s your fault, not mine.

Several people here have helpfully warned you that your text looks
like gibberish. But of course it's all our fault for not using the
exact same version of the exact same software as you, as all
right-thinking people do.

I'm not using any "reader." I'm viewing the text as plain ASCII.

The alternative, treating email or newsgroup posts as code rather than
text, has a small advtantage: I could tell what that character in
your name was supposed to be. But it would also have a very large disadvantage: A rogue newsgroup post or email could reprogram my
computer to rebroadcast spam. Or, far worse, it could turn it into
a child porn server, resulting in my getting a life sentence.

So I will continue to treat all email and all newsgroup posts as
plain text.

Also, I'm about 95% sure that the rogue character in your name is
simply meant to be an apostrophe. If I'm wrong, I can live with that.
I'll just have to deal with never knowing.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

In Message-ID:<117l15a$2qta0$3@dont-email.me>,
Lawrence D Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Sun, 6 Sep 2026 19:52:04 -0400, Gary McGath wrote:

The only trouble is that Usenet readers don't always handle
non-ASCII characters well.

That must be very old software, is all I can say. Unicode has been
around for about a third of a century now, and is universally
supported across all major computer platforms.

Postel's law is even older.

This one is from no later than 2003:
Really, almost all the other "rules" of Usenet are corollaries of
this one: Readers' convenience trumps writer's convenience.

Several readers report that that character isn't coming through as
you intended. There's no telling how many others aren't seeing it
your way, but haven't mentioned it.

For me, the weird character shows up as a lower case y with an
umlaut. Somehow I doubt that's what you want me to see.
--
Sue Dominus
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:16:36 -0400, Someone Else wrote:

For me, the weird character shows up as a lower case y with an
umlaut. Somehow I doubt that's what you want me to see.

My posting contains this header line:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

How much more explicit do I need to be? ThatrCOs a standard MIME-type
header line, invented back in the 20th century and commonly adopted
across email, HTTP ... everything, really. USENET is supposed to use
the same sorts of header lines.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On Mon, 7 Sep 2026 03:07:40 -0000 (UTC), Keith F. Lynch wrote:

Several people here have helpfully warned you that your text looks
like gibberish. But of course it's all our fault for not using the
exact same version of the exact same software as you, as all
right-thinking people do.

Lots of other people use entirely different software from me, and have
no trouble.

I'm not using any "reader." I'm viewing the text as plain ASCII.

I wonder why?
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

Lawrence D\377Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

Someone Else wrote:

For me, the weird character shows up as a lower case y with an
umlaut. Somehow I doubt that's what you want me to see.

My posting contains this header line:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

How much more explicit do I need to be?

You could simply *say* what that character is meant to be.
Use your words.

But clearly you'd rather keep everyone guessing.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

Lawrence D\377Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

Keith F. Lynch wrote:

I'm not using any "reader." I'm viewing the text as plain ASCII.

I wonder why?

I just explained why: Treating newsgroup posts as code would let any
rogue Usenet poster trash my computer. As I said, the worst case I
can think of is that it would be turned into a child porn server,
and that I would then be given a life sentence.

Unlikely? Yes. But the downside is so huge, and the upside is so
tiny, it's no contest. Similarly, I would never try to race a train
across a closed railroad gate, since I'd much rather be delayed by
five minutes than to risk being torn limb from limb by a train.

Indeed, I think anyone who makes the opposite choice simply doesn't
know as much about the risks of computers as I do.

But I've only been a computer professional for 46 years, so what do I
know? It must be that you're right, and that the several people who
have reported seeing gibberish from you are all doing it wrong. You
should tell all of us exactly what computer hardware and software you
are using, so that we can all throw ours in the trash and replace it
with a setup identical to yours.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

In Message-ID:<117lecu$2uhjg$3@dont-email.me>,
Lawrence D Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

My posting contains this header line:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

How much more explicit do I need to be?

To me, this doesn't look like UTF-8:

From: Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?= <ldo@nz.invalid>

If I save the raw message and try to read it with a program that does
support UTF-8, it shows exactly what I pasted above.

The most recent version of Forte Agent is from 2014. The only way to
support multiple character sets in one post is via user-written
modifications.
--
Sue Dominus
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

In article <117lecu$2uhjg$3@dont-email.me>,
Lawrence D Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:16:36 -0400, Someone Else wrote:

For me, the weird character shows up as a lower case y with an
umlaut. Somehow I doubt that's what you want me to see.

My posting contains this header line:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

How much more explicit do I need to be? ThatrCOs a standard MIME-type
header line, invented back in the 20th century and commonly adopted
across email, HTTP ... everything, really. USENET is supposed to use
the same sorts of header lines.

[Hal Heydt]
I see the actual text characters just fine. What gets garbled is
some of the special characters that gets intermixed. For
instance...here in vi, while I'm typing this, I can see the
single-quote in "That's" fine. But when reading the post
initially it didn't show correctly.

Using trn on a bsd system, and connecting to it using PuTTY.
PuTTY translate is set to UTF-8.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

In article <117jrug$286dj$1@dont-email.me>,
Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com> wrote:

On 9/6/26 9:18 AM, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:

Older Americans (like me) remember when US and Canadian dollars
were equal in value and not only could you spend bills relatively
freely back and forth (at least when you were close to the
border), you could spend coins the same way.

I can remember having to explain to a cashier why I didn't want a
Canadian dime in my change. Canadian coins once turned up fairly often
in New Hampshire, though they're much less common now.

I found a Russian 5 Kopek coin in my change once (it about the size of a penny). About 2-3 decades ago, a then co-worker showed me some of the
odd coins that showed up in the coffee fund (I remember a French 1 Franc
coin and a coin from Malta).
--
"We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement."
Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan describes progress in _Komarr_. rCo-----------------------------------------------------
Robert Woodward robertaw@drizzle.com
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On Mon, 7 Sep 2026 04:48:42 -0000 (UTC), Keith F. Lynch wrote:

Lawrence D\377Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

Keith F. Lynch wrote:

I'm not using any "reader." I'm viewing the text as plain ASCII.

I wonder why?

I just explained why: Treating newsgroup posts as code would let any
rogue Usenet poster trash my computer.

ItrCOs text, not code.

Imagine itrCOs 1994, and you were refusing to use this newfangled ASCII
thing, you wanted to stick to EBCDIC or something. YourCOd get laughed
out of the room.

Unicode is older now than ASCII was then.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

Everyone, feel free to argue this to your heart's content.

I produce the MT VOID in three formats: plain text, HTML, and a PDF
generated from the HTML. I don't use smart quotes, and I strip the
diacritical marks (and "transliterate" letters not in the English
alphabet, such as o-slash). If I remember, I try to restore them in the
HTML, which I create by hand; I don't always remember.

And one reason I do this is that I use vi to produce the plain text, and
a lot of these things show up as weird blue codes rather than letters.
And the plain text gets mailed to people using a wide variety of mail
readers.

Anyone who isn't happy with the result is free to stop reading it.

(I am not totally against change. I just recently started using only one
space rather than two between sentences.)
--
Evelyn C. Leeper, http://leepers.us/evelyn
Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit
that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes
-Friedrich Nietzsche
86 47 II/4 25
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On 9/7/26 12:27 AM, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 7 Sep 2026 03:07:40 -0000 (UTC), Keith F. Lynch wrote:

Several people here have helpfully warned you that your text looks
like gibberish. But of course it's all our fault for not using the
exact same version of the exact same software as you, as all
right-thinking people do.

Lots of other people use entirely different software from me, and have
no trouble.

The basic fact is that Usenet is ancient, and so is a lot of the
software used to access it. When lots of people report the issue,
telling them all to use different software is never a successful strategy.
--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On 9/7/26 12:48 AM, Keith F. Lynch wrote:

Lawrence D\377Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

Keith F. Lynch wrote:

I'm not using any "reader." I'm viewing the text as plain ASCII.

I wonder why?

I just explained why: Treating newsgroup posts as code would let any
rogue Usenet poster trash my computer. As I said, the worst case I
can think of is that it would be turned into a child porn server,
and that I would then be given a life sentence.

Unlikely? Yes. But the downside is so huge, and the upside is so
tiny, it's no contest. Similarly, I would never try to race a train
across a closed railroad gate, since I'd much rather be delayed by
five minutes than to risk being torn limb from limb by a train.

Indeed, I think anyone who makes the opposite choice simply doesn't
know as much about the risks of computers as I do.

But I've only been a computer professional for 46 years, so what do I
know? It must be that you're right, and that the several people who
have reported seeing gibberish from you are all doing it wrong. You
should tell all of us exactly what computer hardware and software you
are using, so that we can all throw ours in the trash and replace it
with a setup identical to yours.

For what it's worth, I was also a computer professional for my whole
career, and I can't conceive of any way that rendering text as Unicode
could cause code to be executed on my computer.

Any reader whose code I haven't studied _could_ contain Trojan horse
code, but that applies just as much to ASCII readers.
--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

In article <117l15a$2qta0$3@dont-email.me>,
Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?= <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Sun, 6 Sep 2026 19:52:04 -0400, Gary McGath wrote:

The only trouble is that Usenet readers don't always handle
non-ASCII characters well.

That must be very old software, is all I can say. Unicode has been
around for about a third of a century now, and is universally
supported across all major computer platforms. Fallback fonts that
give legible renditions for every character (e.g. GooglerCOs rCLNotorCY >series) are freely available. So IrCOm not really sure what the excuse
is, any more.

Usenet is very old. Change is slow.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

In Message-ID:<117lnu8$312dt$1@dont-email.me>,
"Evelyn C. Leeper" <evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com> wrote:

Everyone, feel free to argue this to your heart's content.

snip.

(I am not totally against change. I just recently started using only one >space rather than two between sentences.)

I don't think anyone is objecting to anything that you've posted.
It's just thread drift about Lawrence D<some character>Oliveiro's
diatribes against those of us using software he doesn't like.

I'va also made changes over my life. I've dropped the second space,
the hyphen from email, and the h from yogurt.
--
Sue Dominus
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On 9/6/2026 8:40 PM, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Sun, 6 Sep 2026 19:52:04 -0400, Gary McGath wrote:

The only trouble is that Usenet readers don't always handle
non-ASCII characters well.

That must be very old software, is all I can say. Unicode has been
around for about a third of a century now, and is universally
supported across all major computer platforms. Fallback fonts that
give legible renditions for every character (e.g. GooglerCOs rCLNotorCY series) are freely available. So IrCOm not really sure what the excuse
is, any more.

Identical-looking characters in different languages aren't always
the same Unicode character.

That is a known pitfall, with no easy answer.

Some people on this sub are still using trn, which originally didn't
handle Unicode.

Out of curiosity, several years ago I compiled the trn source code
from scratch under Linux, and found that with the proper switches,
it handled Unicode just fine, but I also had so specify some extra
header lines.

I posted (in this group) messages including Tibetan text, as a demo.

We get mojibake when a non-complying trn instance quotes a message
containing Unicode.

pt


--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On 9/7/26 7:12 AM, Gary McGath wrote:

For what it's worth, I was also a computer professional for my whole
career, and I can't conceive of any way that rendering text as Unicode
could cause code to be executed on my computer.

Other than the code to render the characters (because I'm sure someone
will nitpick my words).
--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

In Message-ID:<17lt9l1a1v8h20a4m2cbi2iahdqn3cg1ki@4ax.com>,
Someone Else <SueDominus@example.com.invalid> wrote:

I don't think anyone is objecting to anything that you've posted.
It's just thread drift about Lawrence D<some character>Oliveiro's
diatribes against those of us using software he doesn't like.

To be fair, I should also mention the diatribes against Lawrence for
using characters we can't all see correctly.
--
Sue Dominus
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

Someone Else <SueDominus@example.com.invalid> wrote:

Someone Else <SueDominus@example.com.invalid> wrote:

I don't think anyone is objecting to anything that you've posted.
It's just thread drift about Lawrence D<some character>Oliveiro's
diatribes against those of us using software he doesn't like.

To be fair, I should also mention the diatribes against Lawrence for
using characters we can't all see correctly.

I haven't seen any such diatribe. I have seen several people politely
inform him that his name isn't displaying as he intended, since he
appeared to be unaware of that.

Also, several people ridiculed him for his reaction to that info,
i.e. his repeated insistence that everyone but him is doing the
Internet all wrong.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On Mon, 7 Sep 2026 15:01:14 -0400, Gary McGath wrote:

On 9/7/26 7:12 AM, Gary McGath wrote:

For what it's worth, I was also a computer professional for my
whole career, and I can't conceive of any way that rendering text
as Unicode could cause code to be executed on my computer.

Other than the code to render the characters (because I'm sure
someone will nitpick my words).

rCL... could cause code controlled by some external untrusted entity to
be executed on my computerrCY, perhaps. ;)

#NitpickProofing
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On Mon, 7 Sep 2026 03:08:56 -0400, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:

And one reason I do this is that I use vi to produce the plain text,
and a lot of these things show up as weird blue codes rather than
letters.

Surely even vi can cope with Unicode nowadays ...
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On 9/7/26 17:48, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 7 Sep 2026 03:08:56 -0400, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:

And one reason I do this is that I use vi to produce the plain text,
and a lot of these things show up as weird blue codes rather than
letters.

Surely even vi can cope with Unicode nowadays ...

I don't know. All I know is sometimes when someone sends me something
for inclusion, weird blue codes show up in vi.
--
Evelyn C. Leeper, http://leepers.us/evelyn
Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit
that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes
-Friedrich Nietzsche
86 47 II/4 25
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On Mon, 7 Sep 2026 18:59:52 -0400, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:

On 9/7/26 17:48, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 7 Sep 2026 03:08:56 -0400, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:

And one reason I do this is that I use vi to produce the plain
text, and a lot of these things show up as weird blue codes rather
than letters.

Surely even vi can cope with Unicode nowadays ...

I don't know. All I know is sometimes when someone sends me
something for inclusion, weird blue codes show up in vi.

Do you have the rCLunicoderCY tool available at your command line? E.g.

ldo@theon:~> unicode u+00b1
U+00B1 PLUS-MINUS SIGN
UTF-8: c2 b1 UTF-16BE: 00b1 Decimal: &#177; Octal: \0261
-#
Category: Sm (Symbol, Math); East Asian width: A (ambiguous)
Unicode block: 0080..00FF; Latin-1 Supplement
Bidi: ET (European Number Terminator)
Age: Assigned as of Unicode 1.1.0 (June, 1993)

Would the same command show the character legibly on your system?
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On Mon, 7 Sep 2026 07:07:28 -0400, Gary McGath wrote:

The basic fact is that Usenet is ancient, and so is a lot of the
software used to access it. When lots of people report the issue,
telling them all to use different software is never a successful
strategy.

How far back do we need to go, I wonder? I mentioned that Unicode is
older now than ASCII was when Unicode was invented. But even then,
ASCII was still younger than Baudot code was when ASCII was invented.

Is that an argument for going back to Baudot code?

Even folks using Windows -- unless that Windows version is older than
XP, it is built on the Windows NT kernel. Which was one of the first
to embrace Unicode right into its deepest levels, way back to its
first release in 1993.

It would be ironic, indeed, if peoplerCOs Windows systems are having
trouble with Unicode, would it not?
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On 9/7/26 19:49, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 7 Sep 2026 18:59:52 -0400, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:

On 9/7/26 17:48, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 7 Sep 2026 03:08:56 -0400, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:

And one reason I do this is that I use vi to produce the plain
text, and a lot of these things show up as weird blue codes rather
than letters.

Surely even vi can cope with Unicode nowadays ...

I don't know. All I know is sometimes when someone sends me
something for inclusion, weird blue codes show up in vi.

Do you have the rCLunicoderCY tool available at your command line? E.g.

ldo@theon:~> unicode u+00b1
U+00B1 PLUS-MINUS SIGN
UTF-8: c2 b1 UTF-16BE: 00b1 Decimal: &#177; Octal: \0261
-#
Category: Sm (Symbol, Math); East Asian width: A (ambiguous)
Unicode block: 0080..00FF; Latin-1 Supplement
Bidi: ET (European Number Terminator)
Age: Assigned as of Unicode 1.1.0 (June, 1993)

Would the same command show the character legibly on your system?

zsh: command not found: unicode

And why would I want to go through this even if it existed?

I've been editing/publishing the MT VOID for 48 years this way, through
2448 issues, and I am not going to twist myself into knots for non-English-alphabet letters. The only time *that I know of* when it
changes meaning is in Spanish ("a&ntilde;o" vs. "ano"), and I will just
avoid that.
--
Evelyn C. Leeper, http://leepers.us/evelyn
Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit
that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes
-Friedrich Nietzsche
86 47 II/4 25
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

In article <117nfl8$3mkrs$1@dont-email.me>,
Evelyn C. Leeper <evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com> wrote:

On 9/7/26 17:48, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 7 Sep 2026 03:08:56 -0400, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:

And one reason I do this is that I use vi to produce the plain text,
and a lot of these things show up as weird blue codes rather than
letters.

Surely even vi can cope with Unicode nowadays ...

I don't know. All I know is sometimes when someone sends me something
for inclusion, weird blue codes show up in vi.

[Hal Heydt]
They may be control codes, such as ^M (MS Windows files use a
lf/cr to end a line, where *nix systems just use lf to terminate a
line), or an esape sequence such as ^[, which is an actual escape
character.

In running ConReg for Dundracon, I get files of comp'd members
generated by Windows programs. Once transferred to a Linux
system, I use vi to--among other things--remove the trailing ^M
(carriage return) from each line.

When I generate badge images to print, my program inserts the
needed PCL coding, and those codes invariably begin with an
escape character. If you look at the generated files in vi, they
are full of ^[ characters.

Don't get me started on people who send HTML formatted files to a
*nix mailbox expecting it to be formatted when opened by "mail".
On the other hand, the inability to format HTML or display
graphics--let alone execute anything--is an effective way to
avoid malware infections.

There's an old unix joke that the way an email can infect a unix
system is one that starts with, "Please run the attached
executable on your system."
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On 9/7/26 8:03 PM, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:

I've been editing/publishing the MT VOID for 48 years this way, through
2448 issues, and I am not going to twist myself into knots for non- English-alphabet letters.-a The only time *that I know of* when it
changes meaning is in Spanish ("a&ntilde;o" vs. "ano"), and I will just avoid that.

Several German words are distinguished by the presence or absence of an umlaut. For example, "schoen" is "beautiful," "schon" is "already." Fortunately, there's an ASCII workaround for German, as I've just
illustrated. Putting an "e" after a vowel is an acceptable substitute
for an umlaut. Similarly, the esszett, which looks a little like a
lower-case Greek beta, can be replaced with "ss."
--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

In Message-ID:<117nn3u$36dk1$4@dont-email.me>,
Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com> wrote:

Similarly, the esszett, which looks a little like a
lower-case Greek beta, can be replaced with "ss."

This reminds me of something I saw on the Internet long ago. (I'll
use "b" as that German letter.)

Someone wanted to have an awesome "signature", so he used that symbol
in his name and ended up with "b"illy "b"ad ass. Someone pointed out
what the pronunciation of that would be.

We can all also be annoyed at the Greekish signs (usually in a
chiseled font) that use capital sigma for capital E.
--
Sue Dominus
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

Dorothy J Heydt <djheydt@kithrup.com> wrote:

In running ConReg for Dundracon, I get files of comp'd members
generated by Windows programs. Once transferred to a Linux
system, I use vi to--among other things--remove the trailing ^M
(carriage return) from each line.

MUCH faster to do it from the command line with
tr '\015' ' '

When I generate badge images to print, my program inserts the
needed PCL coding, and those codes invariably begin with an
escape character. If you look at the generated files in vi, they
are full of ^[ characters.

Yes, PCL is not intended to be human-readable and... it's not.

Don't get me started on people who send HTML formatted files to a
*nix mailbox expecting it to be formatted when opened by "mail".
On the other hand, the inability to format HTML or display
graphics--let alone execute anything--is an effective way to
avoid malware infections.

Legacy mail doesn't know about mime, but you can save it, munpack it,
and run it into lynx if you wish.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On Tue, 8 Sep 2026 00:14:22 GMT, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:

Don't get me started on people who send HTML formatted files to a
*nix mailbox expecting it to be formatted when opened by "mail". On
the other hand, the inability to format HTML or display
graphics--let alone execute anything--is an effective way to avoid
malware infections.

This is why I use Claws as my email client. Its inability to render
HTML is a feature, not a bug.

Unicode, on the other hand, works fine.
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On Mon, 7 Sep 2026 20:03:41 -0400, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:

I've been editing/publishing the MT VOID for 48 years this way,
through 2448 issues, and I am not going to twist myself into knots
for non-English-alphabet letters.

ASCII isnrCOt quite sufficient, even if you restrict yourself to the
English language. The Brits measure their money in -u. Temperatures are
in -#C or -#F. Even in the US you can still pay for some things with -o, canrCOt you? And donrCOt forget the legal requirements behind symbols like
--, -< and rao.

Here in NZ we have M-Uori words which need extra letters (thererCOs one
there). One of our MPs is named Chl||e Swarbrick, and most of us
(herself included) take it for granted that we can spell it correctly.
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On Mon, 07 Sep 2026 21:28:31 -0400, Someone Else wrote:

In Message-ID:<117nn3u$36dk1$4@dont-email.me>,
Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com> wrote:

Similarly, the esszett, which looks a little like a lower-case
Greek beta, can be replaced with "ss."

This reminds me of something I saw on the Internet long ago. (I'll
use "b" as that German letter.)

Someone wanted to have an awesome "signature", so he used that
symbol in his name and ended up with "b"illy "b"ad ass. Someone
pointed out what the pronunciation of that would be.

Somebody couldnrCOt tell their |f from their +A ...

We can all also be annoyed at the Greekish signs (usually in a
chiseled font) that use capital sigma for capital E.

Remember rCLMY BIG FAT GRSSK WSDDINGrCY ...
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

In article <117nuei$hhq$1@panix2.panix.com>,
Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:

Dorothy J Heydt <djheydt@kithrup.com> wrote:

In running ConReg for Dundracon, I get files of comp'd members
generated by Windows programs. Once transferred to a Linux
system, I use vi to--among other things--remove the trailing ^M
(carriage return) from each line.

MUCH faster to do it from the command line with
tr '\015' ' '

[Hal Heydt]
I don't want to transalate it. I want to get rid of it. I
use...
:g/^V^M/s///
where "^X" is to read as "ctrl-X" for whatever value of X.

Don't get me started on people who send HTML formatted files to a
*nix mailbox expecting it to be formatted when opened by "mail".
On the other hand, the inability to format HTML or display
graphics--let alone execute anything--is an effective way to
avoid malware infections.

Legacy mail doesn't know about mime, but you can save it, munpack it,
and run it into lynx if you wish.

Much simpler to take one glance and delete it. Nearly everything
to comes into Dorothy's kithrup account as mail is spam. The
small amount that isn't spam is plain ASCII text.
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On 9/7/2026 5:46 PM, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 7 Sep 2026 15:01:14 -0400, Gary McGath wrote:

On 9/7/26 7:12 AM, Gary McGath wrote:

For what it's worth, I was also a computer professional for my
whole career, and I can't conceive of any way that rendering text
as Unicode could cause code to be executed on my computer.

Other than the code to render the characters (because I'm sure
someone will nitpick my words).

rCL... could cause code controlled by some external untrusted entity to
be executed on my computerrCY, perhaps. ;)

#NitpickProofing

At the limit, any time you use a program to process data provided by
someone else, there is a risk that it will exploit a bug in your
program to make the program do something undesired and unexpected,
up to and including running code sent as part of the data.

Back when I was a wee hacker, buffer overflows were the gateway -
send much longer text than expected, or number staggeringly huge,
and you could compromise many programs.

Keith may think by eschewing Unicode and HTML, he's escaped the
problem, but trn still has bugs.

pt
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On 9/7/26 11:31 PM, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 07 Sep 2026 21:28:31 -0400, Someone Else wrote:

We can all also be annoyed at the Greekish signs (usually in a
chiseled font) that use capital sigma for capital E.

Remember rCLMY BIG FAT GRSSK WSDDINGrCY ...

You beat me to it.
--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

In article <117nn3u$36dk1$4@dont-email.me>, garym@mcgath.com (Gary McGath) wrote:

Similarly, the esszett, which looks a little like a
lower-case Greek beta, can be replaced with "ss."

When I first got satellite television back in the nineties you could get
a number of German channels unencrypted. There was also a magazine of
channel listings. Apparently on Saturdays you could see FUBBALL.
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

In article <117o60g$3t1ta$1@dont-email.me>,
Cryptoengineer <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:

On 9/7/2026 5:46 PM, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 7 Sep 2026 15:01:14 -0400, Gary McGath wrote:

On 9/7/26 7:12 AM, Gary McGath wrote:

For what it's worth, I was also a computer professional for my
whole career, and I can't conceive of any way that rendering text
as Unicode could cause code to be executed on my computer.

Other than the code to render the characters (because I'm sure
someone will nitpick my words).

rCL... could cause code controlled by some external untrusted entity to
be executed on my computerrCY, perhaps. ;)

#NitpickProofing

At the limit, any time you use a program to process data provided by
someone else, there is a risk that it will exploit a bug in your
program to make the program do something undesired and unexpected,
up to and including running code sent as part of the data.

Back when I was a wee hacker, buffer overflows were the gateway -
send much longer text than expected, or number staggeringly huge,
and you could compromise many programs.

Keith may think by eschewing Unicode and HTML, he's escaped the
problem, but trn still has bugs.

[Hal Heydt]
Or to put simply.... ALL programs have bugs.

My solution (in the member entry from for my ConReg system) is
limit all inputs to no more bytes than the target data element
will hold.

Possibly on the more general topics under discussion...
Dorothy's novel _The Interior Life_ was written using vi and the
submitted manuscript was formatted using nroff.
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On Tue, 8 Sep 2026 18:37:46 GMT, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:

Possibly on the more general topics under discussion... Dorothy's
novel _The Interior Life_ was written using vi and the submitted
manuscript was formatted using nroff.

nroff is Turing-complete, I believe. So if you were to accept
arbitrary nroff/troff markup from untrusted sources, you could indeed
be tricked into executing dodgy code on your system ...
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

In article <117ps0f$gq7e$5@dont-email.me>,
Lawrence D Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Tue, 8 Sep 2026 18:37:46 GMT, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:

Possibly on the more general topics under discussion... Dorothy's
novel _The Interior Life_ was written using vi and the submitted
manuscript was formatted using nroff.

nroff is Turing-complete, I believe. So if you were to accept
arbitrary nroff/troff markup from untrusted sources, you could indeed
be tricked into executing dodgy code on your system ...

[Hal Heydt]
She used the -ms macro package that was on the bsd 2.9 system
that she entered the files on. She was able to type at full
speed, inserting the nroff macros on the fly. I'm inclined to
doubt that there were malware-afflicted *roff (there was later
ditroff) at the time...and it probably wouldn't be worth anyone's
time and effort to create on now.

Yes, I know the folly of "security by obscurity", but some attack
surfaces are rare enough that attacks are rather unlikely.
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

On Mon, 7 Sep 2026 07:07:28 -0400, Gary McGath wrote:

The basic fact is that Usenet is ancient, and so is a lot of the
software used to access it. When lots of people report the issue,
telling them all to use different software is never a successful
strategy.

How far back do we need to go, I wonder? I mentioned that Unicode is
older now than ASCII was when Unicode was invented. But even then,
ASCII was still younger than Baudot code was when ASCII was invented.

Is that an argument for going back to Baudot code?

Even folks using Windows -- unless that Windows version is older than
XP, it is built on the Windows NT kernel. Which was one of the first
to embrace Unicode right into its deepest levels, way back to its
first release in 1993.

It would be ironic, indeed, if peoplerCOs Windows systems are having
trouble with Unicode, would it not?

Windows has a bias for using UCS-2 (or, later, UTF-16), probably
because Microsoft decided to adopt Unicode before more than 2**16
code points were allocated. At the time, using 2 8-bit bytes for
each 16-bit character seemed sensible. Modern Unicode has far
more code points than can be represented in 16 bits, and is most
commonly used with variable-width encodings.

UTF-8 is the most common encoding these days. Most Windows software
is able to use UTF-8, but might still have a bias for UTF-16.

Usenet originated at a time when supporting only plain ASCII seemed
reasonable (and Baudot would not have been). Given the lack of any
central authority, not all software has been updated -- and plenty
of users are satisfied enough with what they use that they don't
bother to upgrade.

My own newsreader is configured to support UTF-8, so I can see
that the punctuation character in your name is U+2019 "RIGHT
SINGLE QUOTATION MARK". An ASCII-only program might display that
character (which is represented as 3 bytes in UTF-8) as something
like \342\200\231, or perhaps M-bM-^@M-^Y.

You could, if you chose to do so, use an ASCII apostrophe U+0027
rather than U+2019. I believe that would be semantically more
appropriate, since the character does not introduce a quotation,
whereas an apostrophe is exactly what fits in that place: "Lawrence D'Oliveiro". It would be displayed correctly even by ASCII-only
client software.

Of course it's your name, and you can spell it how you like. If you
want your name to contain an unmatched right quotation mark, you
can do so. If you chose to use an apostrophe instead, more people
would be able to read your name.

The issues are a bit different for people with non-ASCII accented
characters in their names.
--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On 9/9/26 9:40 PM, Keith Thompson wrote:

You could, if you chose to do so, use an ASCII apostrophe U+0027
rather than U+2019. I believe that would be semantically more
appropriate, since the character does not introduce a quotation,
whereas an apostrophe is exactly what fits in that place: "Lawrence D'Oliveiro". It would be displayed correctly even by ASCII-only
client software.

Of course it's your name, and you can spell it how you like. If you
want your name to contain an unmatched right quotation mark, you
can do so. If you chose to use an apostrophe instead, more people
would be able to read your name.

There are also visual issues. Historically, the ASCII apostrophe has
done double duty as an opening and closing single quote, so many
typefaces represent it as a vertical stroke for the sake of neutrality.
The right quotation mark often looks more like what we expect an
apostrophe in an attractive font to look like.
--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com> wrote:

There are also visual issues. Historically, the ASCII apostrophe
has done double duty as an opening and closing single quote, so
many typefaces represent it as a vertical stroke for the sake of
neutrality. The right quotation mark often looks more like what
we expect an apostrophe in an attractive font to look like.

Again, the perfect is the enemy of the good. It might look slightly
better to some people, but only at the expense of looking much worse
to most others, e.g. like "\342\200\231."

And the ages of Unicode and UTF-8 are as completely irrelevant as is
the age of chess. The rules of UTF-8 don't automatically apply to
all emails any more than the rules of chess apply to all board games.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On 9/10/26 12:15 PM, Keith F. Lynch wrote:

Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com> wrote:

There are also visual issues. Historically, the ASCII apostrophe
has done double duty as an opening and closing single quote, so
many typefaces represent it as a vertical stroke for the sake of
neutrality. The right quotation mark often looks more like what
we expect an apostrophe in an attractive font to look like.

Again, the perfect is the enemy of the good. It might look slightly
better to some people, but only at the expense of looking much worse
to most others, e.g. like "\342\200\231."

For small values of "most." There's such a lack of consensus that it's
better to stick with ASCII, but I'd hardly say that most people still
use software that won't handle anything more. There must even be some
who still use ISO 8859.
--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

In <117lm25$30p2c$1@dont-email.me> Lawrence <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

On Mon, 7 Sep 2026 04:48:42 -0000 (UTC), Keith F. Lynch wrote:

Lawrence D\377Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

Keith F. Lynch wrote:

I'm not using any "reader." I'm viewing the text as plain ASCII.

I wonder why?

I just explained why: Treating newsgroup posts as code would let any
rogue Usenet poster trash my computer.

It???s text, not code.

Imagine it???s 1994, and you were refusing to use this newfangled ASCII >thing, you wanted to stick to EBCDIC or something. You???d get laughed
out of the room.

That would be confusing. Particularly since ASCII was standardized
initially (the 7 bit version) in 1963 (and used by the Teletype 33), and EBCDIC didn't come out until IBM shipped the System/360 (announced 1964, delivered 1965).

You may be thinking of BCD, which was a 6 bit code (EBCDIC was 8 bit,
designed around Bytes, which earlier machines like the 7090, which didn't
use bytes, but words, or earlier machines like the 1620, which used
decimal digits).

The 026 keypunch was built for BCD. The 029 came out with System/360.

Unicode is older now than ASCII was then.

Ben
--
Ben Yalow ybmcu@panix.com
Not speaking for anybody
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

In article <1187mgu$h2d$1@reader1.panix.com>,
Ben Yalow <ybmcu@panix.com> wrote:

In <117lm25$30p2c$1@dont-email.me> Lawrence <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
You may be thinking of BCD, which was a 6 bit code (EBCDIC was 8 bit, >designed around Bytes, which earlier machines like the 7090, which didn't >use bytes, but words, or earlier machines like the 1620, which used
decimal digits).

[Hal Heydt]
And the 1620 coded alphanumeric characters in 2 digits, so it
actually had 8 bits to work with.

The 026 keypunch was built for BCD. The 029 came out with System/360.

Not to mention the 024 keypunch. The difference being that the
026 printed the character at the top of the card and the 024
didn't. Probably don't want to get into the 011 card punch...
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

Ben Yalow <ybmcu@panix.com> wrote:

Lawrence <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

Unicode is older now than ASCII was then.

Yes, and chess is many centuries old. But that doesn't mean that the
rules of chess apply to all board games.

And the rules of Unicode don't apply to all email. They never have.
They never will.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
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