henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (10/25/88)
In article <3989@rlvd.UUCP> caag@inf.rl.ac.uk (Crispin Goswell) writes: >>ASCII is ASCII anywhere.... > >Not in Europe it isn't. Pick up a manual for a Japanese matrix printer some >time: you'll find at least ten variants... The original statement stands: ASCII is ASCII everywhere. This is not changed by the deplorable tendency to slap the label "ASCII" on anything that happens to resemble ASCII in some way. >Even in versions of ASCII for the same country you sometimes find that a >subset of &$#^~\_{}[]` get variously interchanged on printers or VDUs. These character sets are not versions of ASCII. They are instantiations of the ISO 7-bit set; ASCII is another such instantiation. ASCII is a single, well-defined, well-specified character set, with no significant variations allowed. And by and large, existing implementations of it follow the standard fairly well. There are a wide range of 8-bit character sets that have ASCII as a subset, but the ASCII inside them is generally pretty pure. (ASCII is defined as 7 and only 7 bits, so these character sets are ASCII+XYZ, not variants of ASCII.) There are also a number of other 7-bit character sets related to ASCII, in that they too are instantiations of the ISO 7-bit set, but they are not ASCII, and only marketing turkeys pretend that they are. -- The dream *IS* alive... | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology but not at NASA. |uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
pjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) (10/27/88)
In article <1988Oct24.201751.19602@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
...ASCII is a single, well-defined, well-specified character set, with no
Except, of course, for LINE FEED/NEWLINE.
--
Pete Holsberg UUCP: {...!rutgers!}princeton!mccc!pjh
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Trenton, NJ 08690 Voice: 1-609-586-4800henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (10/29/88)
In article <359@mccc.UUCP> pjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) writes: >>...ASCII is a single, well-defined, well-specified character set... > >Except, of course, for LINE FEED/NEWLINE. Actually, if one is being picky, there are a number of permissible variations in how control characters are handled. (Which doesn't affect the original discussion about printing characters.) The LF/NL business is one of those variations. Yes, newline is permitted by the standard, assuming both ends agree. -- The dream *IS* alive... | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology but not at NASA. |uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr) (10/29/88)
In article <359@mccc.UUCP> pjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) writes: | In article <1988Oct24.201751.19602@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: | ...ASCII is a single, well-defined, well-specified character set, with no | | Except, of course, for LINE FEED/NEWLINE. I think Henry's right. There is no newline in ASCII, it's a feature(?) of the C language, and should not be confused with a real character. If C had only used a non-carriage control character to delimit records, say... the record separator character, there would be less hassle with when is it a newline and when is it carriage control. -- bill davidsen (wedu@ge-crd.arpa) {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me
guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) (10/29/88)
> I think Henry's right. There is no newline in ASCII, Well, I don't have ANSI X3.4-1977 handy to check what Line Feed really means in the original spec for ASCII, but I *do* have ANSI X3.64-1979 handy, and in its description of LINE FEED NEW LINE MODE (for all the UNIX hackers in the audience, you can think of it as "am" :-)) it says: The reset state causes the interpretation of the Format effector Line Feed (LF) defined in ANSI X3.4-1977 to imply only vertical movement of the active position. The set state causes the Format Effector Line Feed (LF) to imply movement to the first position of the following line. >it's a feature(?) of the C language, Well, originally more of a feature of the UNIX operating system, which C inherited - or, more correctly, a feature of the Multics operating system (no, it's not a feature of the PL/I language :-)) that UNIX picked up.
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (11/01/88)
In article <356@auspex.UUCP> guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) writes: >> I think Henry's right. There is no newline in ASCII, > >Well, I don't have ANSI X3.4-1977 handy to check what Line Feed really >means in the original spec for ASCII... "New Line" is explicitly specified as an alternate interpretation of "Line Feed", to be used if and only if both ends of the communication agree on it. -- The dream *IS* alive... | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology but not at NASA. |uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu