einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason) (03/14/90)
I just compiled 'stevie369a' and that went fine. However I have got one question: Why does 'stevie' mask the 8th bit? Here in ICELAND, (and other countries in Europe), we need the upper half of the ASCII to represent all our characters. Even if the real 'vi' does it, it doesn't meen that 'vi' clones must do that as well. In the future, PLEASE don't MASK the 8th bit in software. I did put the icelandic characters in, but in the future PLEASE DON'T MASK the 8th bit. (Otherwise it seems to be a great program. Thanks for it.) ---- I just learned a new curse: "You #$@! son of SCROLLBAR!" Internet: einari@rhi.hi.is | 'Just give me my command line and throw UUCP: ..!mcsun!hafro!rhi!einari | the GUIs in the dust-bin!!!!!!!!!'
emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) (03/15/90)
There's a jStevie that handles 8-bits, from Japan. See the 5 Mar 90 posting to comp.editors or comp.archives on that date. FTP it from utsun.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp "Any questions concerning JSTEVIE should be sent to its author, Jun Ohta, at ohta@src.ricoh.co.jp." --Ed
einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason) (03/15/90)
In article <EMV.90Mar14145536@duby.math.lsa.umich.edu> emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) writes: >There's a jStevie that handles 8-bits, from Japan. >See the 5 Mar 90 posting to comp.editors or >comp.archives on that date. FTP it from > utsun.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp I just forgot. Here in Iceland we can't (as yet) FTP around the world. PROGRAMMERS: PLEASE DON'T *MASK* the 8th bit !!!!! --- I just learned a new curse: "You #$@! son of SCROLLBAR!" Internet: einari@rhi.hi.is | 'Just give me my command line and throw UUCP: ..!mcsun!hafro!rhi!einari | the GUIs in the dust-bin!!!!!!!!!'
ohta@snoopy.src.ricoh.co.jp (Junn Ohta) (03/16/90)
In article <EMV.90Mar14145536@duby.math.lsa.umich.edu>, emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) writes: > There's a jStevie that handles 8-bits, from Japan. > See the 5 Mar 90 posting to comp.editors or > comp.archives on that date. FTP it from > utsun.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp > > "Any questions concerning JSTEVIE should be sent to its author, Jun Ohta, > at ohta@src.ricoh.co.jp." In jstevie, the 8th bit is mainly used for kanji manipulation and usually each pair of 8-bit characters is handled as a kanji character. To use 8-bit single-byte [European] characters on jstevie, (1) select "#define SJIS" in env.h to enable 8th bit handling, and (2) replace the definition of isKanji(c) in stevie.h by #define isKanji(c) 0 to disable double-byte handling. I hope this helps. -junn --------------------------------------------------- ohta%src.ricoh.co.jp@jp-gate.wide.ad.jp (Junn Ohta) ---------------------------------------------------
sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) (03/19/90)
einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason) writes: |I just forgot. Here in Iceland we can't (as yet) FTP around the world. |PROGRAMMERS: PLEASE DON'T *MASK* the 8th bit !!!!! Programmers are just trying to make their software work on *most* systems. For *most* systems out there, ascii only covers seven bits. There are usually good reasons for masking the eighth bit, the best being that *most* terminals go haywire when presented with 8 bit data. 7 bits is a very established way of doing things. What you guys in iceland need is not to require the rest of the world to accomodate you, but for you to accomodate the rest of the world. Perhaps you need a new standard with digraphs or something. Sean -- *** Sean Casey sean@ms.uky.edu, sean@ukma.bitnet, ukma!sean *** "Well, heck's farr, Jim, it gives mah computer sumthin' to do when *** Ah'm out brandin' capacitors." -DM
jt19840@tut.fi (Tuomi Jyrki Juhani) (03/20/90)
In article <14602@s.ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes: >einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason) writes: > >|I just forgot. Here in Iceland we can't (as yet) FTP around the world. > >|PROGRAMMERS: PLEASE DON'T *MASK* the 8th bit !!!!! > >Programmers are just trying to make their software work on *most* >systems. For *most* systems out there, ascii only covers seven bits. >There are usually good reasons for masking the eighth bit, the best >being that *most* terminals go haywire when presented with 8 bit data. Well, this certainly isn't the case with IBM-PC implementation, as the upper 128 chars are clearly defined as line drawing, international alphabet, and other special characters. I also assume (could be wrong, though) that ST, and Amiga have similar facilities. I really wonder about the *most* systems in Sean's posting. How many did you count :-? I could also say, that *most* systems I have been using, allow eight bit characters, like PC compatibles, MACs, DEC VAXen, etc. And they are running the same s/w as in the US :-) >7 bits is a very established way of doing things. Very true, things are changing, however. There is an international standard for eight-bit characters (ISO Latin-1), and e.g. DEC has had eight-bit characters in their systems for years (different from ISO :-( ). Someone else probably knows more about how busily Unix vendors are (or are not) incorporating 8-bit character support in their systems. >What you guys in iceland need is not to require the rest of the world >to accomodate you, but for you to accomodate the rest of the world. Yeah, and us in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Greece, Canada, etc., etc., etc... Even British can't have their pound sign in 7-bit ASCII... Yeah, we certainly need to accomodate the U.S. (oops, the rest of the world). >Perhaps you need a new standard with digraphs or something. Why don't we just stick with the current 8-bit character standard in those environments that provide it and mask the 8th bit only when necessary (e.g. via a conditional compilation option is source files). -- Jyrki Tuomi Internet: jt19840@tut.fi UUCP: ..mcvax!tut!jt19840
guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) (03/20/90)
>Programmers are just trying to make their software work on *most* >systems. For *most* systems out there, ascii only covers seven bits. ASCII only covers seven bits, period. For *many* systems outside English-speaking areas of the world, ASCII isn't sufficient. Many systems support 8-bit character sets. >There are usually good reasons for masking the eighth bit, No, there aren't. >the best being that *most* terminals go haywire when presented with 8 >bit data. That's not a very good reason at all. *Most* terminals can run in 7-bits-plus-parity-bit mode, in which case the serial port hardware strips the 8th bit off for you. *Many* terminals, when presented with 8-bit data, display ISO 8859/1 characters. >7 bits is a very established way of doing things. So was 6-bit BCD, once. Big deal. >What you guys in iceland need is not to require the rest of the world >to accomodate you, but for you to accomodate the rest of the world. No, what we guys in the US need is not to require the rest of the world to accomodate our crufty 7-bit software, but for us to accomodate the rest of the world by letting our software support 8-bit (and, at some point, 16-bit and larger) character sets. >Perhaps you need a new standard with digraphs or something. There already *is* a standard for them, with no crufty digraphs; it's called ISO 8859/1.
perand@nada.kth.se (Per Andersson) (03/20/90)
In article <14602@s.ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes: >7 bits is a very established way of doing things. > >What you guys in iceland need is not to require the rest of the world >to accomodate you, but for you to accomodate the rest of the world. >Perhaps you need a new standard with digraphs or something. For your knowledge, the US is NOT 'the rest of the world' ! AND ALL MAJOR COMPUTER SUPPLIERS ARE GETTING READY TO DELIVER 8-BIT EQUIPMENT THAT WILL FOLLOW ISO-8859/1. This attitude is probably exactly what this guy was trying to show people still exist. It might be OK in shareware etc. but it still exists in commercial applications. Which will break anyday now. Per -- --- Per Andersson Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden perand@admin.kth.se, @nada.kth.se
sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) (03/20/90)
guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes: |>There are usually good reasons for masking the eighth bit, |No, there aren't. Yes, there are. |>the best being that *most* terminals go haywire when presented with 8 |>bit data. |That's not a very good reason at all. *Most* terminals can run in |7-bits-plus-parity-bit mode, in which case the serial port hardware |strips the 8th bit off for you. *Many* terminals, when presented with |8-bit data, display ISO 8859/1 characters. That's a very good reason, indeed. It makes for a "least common denominator" in a world with many different standards for bit 8. |>7 bits is a very established way of doing things. |So was 6-bit BCD, once. Big deal. So was SIXBIT and a whole bunch of historical standards. Unlike them 7-bit is in common use today. |>What you guys in iceland need is not to require the rest of the world |>to accomodate you, but for you to accomodate the rest of the world. |No, what we guys in the US need is not to require the rest of the world |to accomodate our crufty 7-bit software, but for us to accomodate the |rest of the world by letting our software support 8-bit (and, at some |point, 16-bit and larger) character sets. What we don't need is 15 different groups of people using 15 different character set standards complaining because US originated software doesn't support 15 different character sets. I'd *love* to have a world standard, and to have a set of guidelines for meeting that standard. Until then, my software is not allowing 8-bit data to be shoved at terminals because only a small percent of terminals are going to be able to make sense out of it. Sean -- *** Sean Casey sean@ms.uky.edu, sean@ukma.bitnet, ukma!sean *** "Well, heck's farr, Jim, it gives mah computer sumthin' to do when *** Ah'm out brandin' capacitors." -DM
richard@pantor.UUCP (Richard Sargent) (03/20/90)
sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) in Message-ID: <14602@s.ms.uky.edu> writes: > einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason) writes: > |PROGRAMMERS: PLEASE DON'T *MASK* the 8th bit !!!!! ... > What you guys in iceland need is not to require the rest of the world > to accomodate you, but for you to accomodate the rest of the world. > Perhaps you need a new standard with digraphs or something. How terribly self-centered! "Accomodate the rest of the world" indeed! That is EXACTLY what the original author is asking! Let's just do a quick tour of languages in common usage throughout the world: English, French, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swiss, German, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Yugo- slavian, Greek, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, ... the list goes on. Of all those languages, only english can get by with seven bits, but even then poorly. Does your terminal have a "cents" symbol? How about "copyright"? How about the various ligatures? Now for some elementary democracy. How many native english speakers in the world 200M to 300M maybe as much as 500M? Population of the world? A hell of a lot more! Maybe Mr. Casey was joking, maybe he thought the smiley would be "understood", if so, then I apologize for this tirade. Richard Sargent Internet: richard@pantor.UUCP Systems Analyst UUCP: ...!mnetor!becker!pantor!richard
wehr@fmeed1.UUCP (Bruce Wehr) (03/21/90)
In article <3052@auspex.auspex.com>, guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes: > >There are usually good reasons for masking the eighth bit, > > No, there aren't. Yes, there are. The one point I haven't seen yet is the fact that *real* vi masks the 8th bit. If you're writing a clone, you do your best to do *exactly* what the original does ... not matter how stupid it might be. If I was writing a clone to some 'standard' command (I know there's no such thing - that's not the point), I'd try my best to duplicate it's behavior - even the bugs. If I don't, I'm risking breaking someones scripts or something - and I'll get flamed for that. I'm all for improving things - as long as new features are added, and none of the original behavior is modified. But you also can no longer call yourself a clone of the original. Maybe 'new and improved' would be approproate. Yes ... move forward ... don't burn bridges behind you ... and make sure everyone knows that there dealing with something different ... everyone is happy ... (naw, but it sounded good :-) -- Bruce Wehr (wehr%dptc.decnet@srlvx0.srl.ford.com) (...!mailrus!sharkey!fmeed1!wehr) (wehr%fmeed1.uucp@mailgw.cc.umich.edu) Ford Motor Company - Electronics Division 17000 Rotunda Drive, ETC Room LN081, Dearborn, Michigan 48121 (313)845-3039
einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason) (03/21/90)
In article <14602@s.ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes: >einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason) writes: > >|I just forgot. Here in Iceland we can't (as yet) FTP around the world. > >|PROGRAMMERS: PLEASE DON'T *MASK* the 8th bit !!!!! > >Programmers are just trying to make their software work on *most* >systems. For *most* systems out there, ascii only covers seven bits. >There are usually good reasons for masking the eighth bit, the best >being that *most* terminals go haywire when presented with 8 bit data. >7 bits is a very established way of doing things. > Ok. I admit that some terminals go haywire when using the 8th bit. But can you programmers not make it switchable. For example by using an environment variable: (for example) EXT-ASCII=1 if the terminal can use the 8th bit without going haywire. EXT-ASCII=0 (or undefined) if the terminal goes haywire with the 8th bit. >What you guys in iceland need is not to require the rest of the world >to accomodate you, but for you to accomodate the rest of the world. >Perhaps you need a new standard with digraphs or something. There are 20 'special' icelandic characters that need to fit into the 7-bit ASCII. Some of them can be accomdated by using one letter, backspace and then an umlaut, others would have to replace existing characters such as: {[]}. (I absolutely refuse to write a letter using digraphs: "Kj??#r kve??<j til fr??#nda og fr??#nku ??> h???li." :-) In the old days, when PC machines were starting to be the state of the art, we had a character set like that. On Apple II there was a switch beneath the keyboard and by using that switch you could change '[' into 'AE' (unprintable in 7-bit ASCII !!!), ']' into 'Thorn' (again unprintable in 7-bit ASCII !!!) and back again. Confusing ? What if you were a programmer on the Apple (and other machines), and you intended to use the 'special' icelandic characters? You would need to switch back and forth, while looking at your code. Not to good. The development of ISO-8859/1 was a step in the right direction. In that standard are all icelandic characters (and most of those that are used in Europe). The icelandic characters are located in the higher half of 255 characters. (Extended ASCII) I once grabbed a tiny editor of 'comp.binaries.ibm.pc' I tried it out, but when it could not handle the 'special' icelandic characters, it went straight and unrecoverable to the waste-basket. So, the tendence is to allow the 'special' characters. YOU, AMERICANS: WAKE UP. Not all of the world is happy with the 7 bit 'American Standard Code Information Interchange' We *NEED* the 8th-bit software. So in the future PLEASE allow for 8-bit characters. (Optionally maskable for those stray terminals that go haywire when presented with an 8-bit character.) --- I just learned a new curse: "You #$@! son of SCROLLBAR!" Internet: einari@rhi.hi.is | 'Just give me my command line and throw UUCP: ..!mcsun!isgate!rhi!einari | the GUIs in the dust-bin!!!!!!!!!'
einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason) (03/21/90)
In article <14614@s.ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes: >guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes: > >|>There are usually good reasons for masking the eighth bit, > >|No, there aren't. > Right. There aren't good reasons anymore for masking the 8th bit. > >I'd *love* to have a world standard, and to have a set of guidelines for >meeting that standard. Until then, my software is not allowing 8-bit data >to be shoved at terminals because only a small percent of terminals are >going to be able to make sense out of it. Use ISO 8859-1. If your software is not going to allow 8-bit data, could you then PLEASE make it optional (via #define'd constant or environment variable) so the rest of us could use the full 8-bit? --- I just learned a new curse: "You #$@! son of SCROLLBAR!" Internet: einari@rhi.hi.is | 'Just give me my command line and throw UUCP: ..!mcsun!isgate!rhi!einari | the GUIs in the dust-bin!!!!!!!!!'
frisk@rhi.hi.is (Fridrik Skulason) (03/21/90)
In article <14614@s.ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes: >What we don't need is 15 different groups of people using 15 different >character set standards complaining because US originated software doesn't >support 15 different character sets. The software does not have to support 15 different character set - it only has to allow 8 bit characters to be usable. Otherwise it is totally useless here in Iceland and in many other countries. It is as simple as that. Programs that mask the eight bit are, in my opinion, useless junk. Unfortunately a number of American programmers does not seem to have realized this yet. Even well-known PC programs like dBase are not flawless in this respect. Of course, if the programs are intended for use in the the USA only, there is no pressing need to make them allow the use of the eight bit, but at least they should not be distributed on Usenet which has a worldwide distribution. In the past I have made a nice sum of money converting 7-bit programs so they can be used. In the case of PC and especially Atari ST software this often involves patching the executable - maybe replacing a single AND AL,7FH instruction by AND AL,FF. >I'd *love* to have a world standard, and to have a set of guidelines for >meeting that standard. You have it already. It is called ISO 8859/1, 8859/2, 8859/3 etc. >Until then, my software is not allowing 8-bit data Then please keep your useless programs out of my way. I'm getting really annoyed over all the 7-bit programs out there. (In particular the 7-bit PC programs) >to be shoved at terminals because only a small percent of terminals are >going to be able to make sense out of it. Anyone wanting to display 8 bit characters can safely be assumed to have a terminal that is able to display the stuff. Making your software 8-bit transparent will not affect any "7-bit Americans", but it will make the software usable to a much bigger part of the world. -(an annoyed) frisk -- Fridrik Skulason University of Iceland | Technical Editor of the Virus Bulletin (UK) | Reserved for future expansion E-Mail: frisk@rhi.hi.is Fax: 354-1-28801 |
perand@nada.kth.se (Per Andersson) (03/22/90)
In article <5909@fmeed1.UUCP> wehr@fmeed1.UUCP (Bruce Wehr) writes: >In article <3052@auspex.auspex.com>, guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes: >> >There are usually good reasons for masking the eighth bit, >> >> No, there aren't. > >Yes, there are. The one point I haven't seen yet is the fact that >*real* vi masks the 8th bit. If you're writing a clone, you do your It can't in sys V rel 4, 'cause it is supposed to have support for eight bit character sets. So there. Per -- --- Per Andersson Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden perand@admin.kth.se, @nada.kth.se
guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) (03/22/90)
>Yes, there are. The one point I haven't seen yet is the fact that >*real* vi masks the 8th bit. Define "*real* vi". System V Release 3.1's "vi" quite happily deals with 8-bit character sets (which is why SunOS 4.1 uses it as the basis for its "vi").
nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley) (03/22/90)
In article <14602@s.ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes: >Programmers are just trying to make their software work on *most* >systems. For *most* systems out there, ascii only covers seven bits. Since when does 'char' == 'ascii'? If you want it to work on most systems, then always use 'unsigned char' and don't make the assumption that the United States is the center of the world. Of the languages out there, the ones that fit into only 7 bits are definitely in the minority. >There are usually good reasons for masking the eighth bit, the best >being that *most* terminals go haywire when presented with 8 bit data. Quite true, however, if the user wants to enter 8 bit characters then perhaps they know what they're doing? >7 bits is a very established way of doing things. So were punch cards, but I don't see them around to much any more. >What you guys in iceland need is not to require the rest of the world >to accomodate you, but for you to accomodate the rest of the world. >Perhaps you need a new standard with digraphs or something. Drugs, definitely on drugs. The standard exists, it's called ISO-LATIN1 and it uses 8-bits. It's documented in my /usr/pub/latin1. Most of the rest of the *world* uses it; if they have a latin-derived language. (I'd post it here, but my vi strips off the hi-bits :-). -- +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Alphalpha Software, Inc. | Voice/Fax: 617/646-7703 | Home: 617/641-3805 | | 148 Scituate St. | Smart fax, dial number. | | | Arlington, MA 02174 | Dumb fax, dial number, | BBS: 617/641-3722 | | nazgul@alphalpha.com | wait for ring, press 3. | 300/1200/2400 baud | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
ed@braaten.doit.sub.org (Ed Braaten) (03/22/90)
In article <14602@s.ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes: >einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason) writes: > >>PROGRAMMERS: PLEASE DON'T *MASK* the 8th bit !!!!! > >Programmers are just trying to make their software work on *most* >systems. For *most* systems out there, ascii only covers seven bits. >There are usually good reasons for masking the eighth bit, the best >being that *most* terminals go haywire when presented with 8 bit data. >7 bits is a very established way of doing things. My I suggest: Buy a PC! ;-) Seriously though, 7-bit ASCII is nice in an English-speaking country; it's a real PAIN in many other countries. > >What you guys in iceland need is not to require the rest of the world >to accomodate you, but for you to accomodate the rest of the world. What do you consider the "rest of the world"??? >Perhaps you need a new standard with digraphs or something. You should take a course in some language with a non-Roman alphabet, such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, or Russian. Then sit down at your terminal and hack in a letter in one of these languages using a digraph "standard" of your choice. It probably wouldn't take you long to see the problem with 7-bit ASCII... ;-) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ed Braaten | "For the wages of sin is death, but the Work: ed@imuse.intel.com | gift of God is eternal life in Christ Home: ed@braaten.doit.sub.org | Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23 --------------------------------------------------------------------------
hansen@pegasus.ATT.COM (Tony L. Hansen) (03/23/90)
<< >There are usually good reasons for masking the eighth bit, << No, there aren't. < Yes, there are. The one point I haven't seen yet is the fact that *real* < vi masks the 8th bit. If you're writing a clone, you do your best to do < *exactly* what the original does ... not matter how stupid it might be. Thay may have once been true, but it's true no longer. The vi that comes with System V release 3 and later is 8-bit transparent. The ONLY character that vi still doesn't like is the NUL (^@) character; those are still stripped. Tony Hansen att!pegasus!hansen, attmail!tony hansen@pegasus.att.com
nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley) (03/23/90)
In article <14614@s.ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes: >guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes: > >|>There are usually good reasons for masking the eighth bit, >|No, there aren't. >Yes, there are. >|>the best being that *most* terminals go haywire when presented with 8 >|>bit data. >|That's not a very good reason at all. *Most* terminals can run in >That's a very good reason, indeed. It makes for a "least common denominator" >in a world with many different standards for bit 8. Say what? How did the 8 bit data get there in the first place? Either I put it in my file with another (better) editor, or I just typed it. Either way, I don't want anybody to delete it do I? -kee -- +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Alphalpha Software, Inc. | Voice/Fax: 617/646-7703 | Home: 617/641-3805 | | 148 Scituate St. | Smart fax, dial number. | | | Arlington, MA 02174 | Dumb fax, dial number, | BBS: 617/641-3722 | | nazgul@alphalpha.com | wait for ring, press 3. | 300/1200/2400 baud | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
robert@isgtec.UUCP (Robert A. Osborne) (03/24/90)
In article <1591@krafla.rhi.hi.is> frisk@rhi.hi.is (Fridrik Skulason) writes: >Programs that mask the eight bit are, in my opinion, useless junk. >Unfortunately a number of American programmers does not seem to have realized >this yet. Even well-known PC programs like dBase are not flawless in this >respect. In article <1589@krafla.rhi.hi.is> einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason) writes: >YOU, AMERICANS: WAKE UP. Not all of the world is happy with the >7 bit 'American Standard Code Information Interchange' > >We *NEED* the 8th-bit software. So in the future PLEASE allow for 8-bit >characters. (Optionally maskable for those stray terminals that go haywire >when presented with an 8-bit character.) Why don't you two guys stop your bitching, pool your money, and ship some 8 bit systems to the guys who wrote/maintain STEVIE. Why do you expect somebody who is doing YOU a favour by suppling a PD vi to go out of their way to support YOUR language; one they probably don't even speak! Better yet, shut up, make the necessary changes for 8-bit support and send the diffs to the maintainer! If you don't like commercial products that do the same thing bitch at your supplier or at customer support. Or don't by them. Yessh! Rob. -- Robert A. Osborne {...uunet!mnetor,...utzoo}!lsuc!isgtec!robert
prc@erbe.se (Robert Claeson) (03/30/90)
In article <3250@tutor.tut.fi>, jt19840@tut.fi (Tuomi Jyrki Juhani) writes: > Well, this certainly isn't the case with IBM-PC implementation, as the upper > 128 chars are clearly defined as line drawing, international alphabet, and > other special characters. I also assume (could be wrong, though) that ST, > and Amiga have similar facilities. Yes, and the Macintosh. The Mac character set is not completely unlike ISO 8859, and Microsoft Windows and OS/2 Presentation Manager's "ANSI" character set is more or less identical to ISO 8859-1 ("Latin 1"). > I really wonder about the *most* systems in Sean's posting. How many did > you count :-? I could also say, that *most* systems I have been using, > allow eight bit characters, like PC compatibles, MACs, DEC VAXen, etc. > And they are running the same s/w as in the US :-) Don't forget just about any Xenix and UNIX System V system. > >7 bits is a very established way of doing things. Doing what? At least not around here. > Very true, things are changing, however. There is an international standard > for eight-bit characters (ISO Latin-1), and e.g. DEC has had eight-bit > characters in their systems for years (different from ISO :-( ). DEC MCS is based on an early draft of ISO 8859-1. About 6 or so characters differ, none of them alphabetic (if my memory serves me right). No big deal. We use ISO 8859-1 and DEC MCS interchangeably here (just as an UK site would use ASCII and the UK national version of ISO 646 interchangeably). > Someone else probably knows more about how busily Unix vendors are > (or are not) incorporating 8-bit character support in their systems. AT&T, Bull, Sun, HP, Encore, DG, Unisys etc are all incorporating or are already supporting 8 bit character sets with simultaneous support for multiple character sets of various widths. It is quite easy to do with AT&T's "streams" facilities, in fact. AT&T sells such products in 16- and 32-bit (character width, not the word size of the computer) environments. BSD 4.2 has no support for 8-bit character sets (it can't even input them without giving up s/w flow control and the canonical facilities). BSD 4.3 can accept 8-bit characters by the use of the pass8 flag to stty. On the system I use, the date command prints the date in Swedish (my language of choice) with 8-bit characters. The ls command shows the dates of files in Swedish. Vi accepts 8-bit characters and can correctly converting upper- to lower-case in whatever character set I'm using at the moment. There are message catalogs and other neat stuff too. > >What you guys in iceland need is not to require the rest of the world > >to accomodate you, but for you to accomodate the rest of the world. > > Yeah, and us in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, France, Spain, > Portugal, Switzerland, Greece, Canada, etc., etc., etc... Even British can't > have their pound sign in 7-bit ASCII... > > Yeah, we certainly need to accomodate the U.S. (oops, the rest of the world). Why can't the U.S. give up the 'A', 'E' and 'I' characters instead (just joking)? > >Perhaps you need a new standard with digraphs or something. > > Why don't we just stick with the current 8-bit character standard in those > environments that provide it and mask the 8th bit only when necessary > (e.g. via a conditional compilation option is source files). For God's sake, don't care about the so-called "parity bit"! Parity is not part of the data, but of the serial line protocol. Parity should never be handled by the application, but by the serial line circuitry or by the tty driver. If the serial port and the terminal connected to it are set up correctly, the application will never have to care about stripping data down to 7 bits. The "parity bit" is not always the 8th bit either. There's 8 bit data + parity too, in which case the parity bit effectively becomes the 9th bit. -- Robert Claeson E-mail: rclaeson@erbe.se ERBE DATA AB