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Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 11:20:15 -0400 (EDT)
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From: David Bakhash <cadet@MIT.EDU>
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To: Colin Rafferty <craffert@ml.com>
Cc: XEmacs Beta List <xemacs-beta@xemacs.org>
Subject: Re: if vs. cond
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Colin Rafferty writes:
 > 
 > Seriously though, I don't use strokes myself, but I do want to read
 > strokes, and `strokes-decode-buffer''d the article.  Pretty cool.

Let me tell you guys what I'm working on.  It's pretty cool.

I would like to, for now, think of strokes as a simple extension of
regular text.  each glyph is just like a character: you can
cut/paste/copy/undo/etc.  I am dissatisfied with the package so far
since 

1) it doesn't always decode nicely (as peole pointed out from the last
   failed attempt
2) if it *does* work at all, it's b/c the email was MIME-encoded since
   the strokes end up being hundreds of characters on a line.

I am fixing this now.  I thought it over and decided that strokes does
not deserve to have its own MIME type.  Instead, strokes users will
simply use `strokes-encode-buffer' and `strokes-decode-buffer'.  That's
it.  The changes I'm adding now will be major to strokes b/c I'll make
`strokes-encode-buffer' add newlines where necessary to prevent strokes
from needing MIME-encoding.  as it is, strokes only encodes to the
base-64 charset anyway.  So when someone recieves a strokes-encoded
letter, there's no need for MIME-decoding.  It's just as simple as
`strokes-decode-buffer'.  Of course, I would *prefer* there to be a MIME 
type for it, so it would decode, but only if people really want it, and
use strokes as a method of sending chinese/japanese.  If you want it,
I'll try to code it.  But I personally don't care too much for
etcha-schetch/graffiti stuff.  It's nice to have though.  I wanted this
to be useful for chinese/japanese.  This graphical stuff is just
temporary until strokes really does guesture recognition.  (though I
always say that the graphical stuff is nice because it takes care of all 
the languages in one fell swoop, and it preserves the authors actual
handwriting.  On the downside, it's compression is not ideal, but it's
pretty fast, which is important if you're reading a long letter written
in strokes/chinese.)

dave

(p.s. If I *did* make a MIME-type, can someone give me a pointer on what 
to RTFM to make it MIME-able?)

