>What is the danger you see in allowing the 8-bit data?  If it is
>a printable character for the user running finger, I see no danger.
>Please answer that question, so I can understand better.

	you seem to assume that both ends agree about their idea about
	multibyte encoding.  that's not possible.  for instance, if fingerd
	side is using iso-8859-1 and finger side is using euc-jp (or some other
	multibyte encodings that use 2^7 bit set), euc-jp side can go crazy
	(if odd number of octets with 2^7 bit set are sent).

	what should really happen here is to introduce charset negotiation
	into finger protocol.  until such a protocol is proposed/standardized,
	fingerd side should limit itself to generate ASCII-only output.
	(finger side change *may* be okay, from "be liberal on what you receive
	and be conservatibe on what you send" principle)

	anyways, i really would like to see today's change backed out, until
	proper protocol extension is defined.

itojun