colbert@hermix.UUCP.UUCP (09/02/87)
You can create your own Character type by defining an enumeration type that has character literals. e.g. type Character_Type is (Nul, Del, ..., 'A', 'B', ..., Koo_Kai, Khoo_Khai, ....); Where Koo_Kai and Khoo_Khai (etc) are the special characters in your language (these letters are phonetic Thai characters). You can then use an enumeration representation specification to map the enumer- ation literals to the appropriate extended ASCII values. Once you have this character type defined, you can create a string type by defining an array of this character type: e.g. type String_Type is array (positive <>) of Character_Type; This allows you to use string literals such as the following: "This is a string of String_Type" -- may require type qualification However, you will have to use catenation to create string_type expressions that contain your countries special characters (and of course non-printable characters). E.g. "This is a '" & Koo_Kai & "' while this is a '" & Khoo_Khai & "'" As for the I/O of your language specific characters, you will need to create a Thai_Text_IO (or something equivalent). Ada does not say that Text_IO is the ONLY text I/O package, only that it is the standard text I/O package. In this case you need something non-standard. I hope this is of help. Take care, Ed Colbert Absolute Software 4593 Orchid Dr Los Angeles, CA 90043-3320 USA (213) 293-0783 hermix!colbert@rand-unix.arpa ARPA (trwrb!, sesmo!, ...)hermix!colbert UUCP P.S. See LRM Sections 2.6 (String Literals), 3.5.2 (Character Types), 3.6.3 (The Type String), 4.2 (Literals).