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