[net.consumers] Character sets, sorting, etc.

moroney@jon.DEC (Mike Moroney) (11/09/85)

Digital also has an 8-bit character set which is being incorporated in newer
DEC products.  The 32 characters corresponding to the control codes are also
control codes, some are undefined so far, others replace 2 or more characters
in escape sequences (saves slightly on transmission time), what correspond to
ASCII punctuation marks are also punctuation marks of a sort (Spanish upside-
down "!"'s, "?"'s, yen signs, as well as sumbols like pi, some other Greek
letters, degree marks, some super/subscripts, etc.  What would be letters are
also letters, such as "A"'s with circles, umlauts, accents, etc. etc.  With
this character set, all of Western Europe is covered, as well as some Eastern
Europe.  The "new" letters are in alphabetic order w/r/t each other (all the
"A"'s before the "E"'s, etc.), but not to the original 7-bit letters.  If
anyone wants, I can type it in.  To sort this mess, get a VAX!  It has a single
machine instruction to compare character strings in any order you desire.

Mike Moroney
...decvax!decwrl!rhea!jon!moroney