frisk@askja.UUCP (Fridrik Skulason) (08/04/87)
This is a piece I posted on BIX some time ago, but I think it also belongs
here.
Maybe I should only post this to comp.sys.atari.st, but unfortunately our site
does not receive that group.
The 7 bit problem : Mostly about the ATARI-ST, but see horror story #1 (and #2)
Or : What happens when the computer supports 8 bits, but the programmers don't
Some of this even applies to Un*x, as many users (In Europe mostly) know...
[FLAME ON]
It seems that there are a number of programmers around that write
*ALMOST* usable software. What is missing is support of eight bit characters.
A partial list of software for the ATARI-ST that fails:
Express Letter Processor (A total failure, it only allows the entry
of some of the characters in the alphabet)
Degas (It only allows 128 character fonts)
ST Basic (It does not allow strings containing characters 126-255)
DB Master One (A total failure)
Personal Pascal (A total failure)
ED (the original one, from the Dev. package - It almost works, but
not quite)
The latest program to join my junk heap is Fast Basic from Computer Concepts.
It is a *nice* program, very fast, but I find it almost as useful as a fish
would find a bicycle, since it does not accept any characters in the range
128-255.
The surprising thing is that it is a British program, but it does no even
allow the use of the only character in the range 128-255 available from
the British keyboard - the pound sign.
As you can see, the problem is bad - so bad indeed, that it is almost a
cause for celebration when we find a program that works properly. (Like
1ST Word, ST-Writer,ST Logo and a *few* others).
In fact, the majority of foreign programs - especially American ones - are
so bad in this respect, that nobody here even bothers to pirate them, let alone
buy them.
[FLAME OFF]
This is a serious problem here in Iceland, and also in Germany and the
Scandinavian countries. So - if you want to sell a single copy of your
programs here, *please* follow these suggestions:
The six golden rules for making your programs compatible with
the rest of the world.
* Do not suppose that nobody else uses the eight bit, just because
you don't.
* Do not suppose the keyboard can't generate eight bit characters.
* Do not suppose that all other keyboards look just as your own.
* Do not use the eight bit for your own purposes - in particular
do not suppose that "nobody uses this character for anything".
Somebody will.
* (A Atari ST specific suggestion)
Put *ALL* text in English in .RSC files, so they can easily
be translated. - I am tired of having to patch other people's
programs to change a few error messages. (Yes - I know it's
tecnically illegal, but otherwise you can't sell some programs)
* Do not suppose that everybody uses the original character set.
In some countries a standard character set, like ISO/DIS 8859/1
is used. In some cases, the original character set is used, with
a few modifications, like adding a few national characters.
The ST is not the only machine with problems like this:
Horror story 1: DR LOGO on IBM CC
LOGO is supposed to be easy to learn and one of the best languages
to teach to young children - right ?
But then of course the children have to understand English - so we had to
patch the program to translate all keywords and error messages into
Icelandic. It should have been easy - after all, we have considerable
practice in this, but it wasn't.
The reason:
Somebody had used CHR(0), CHR(1) and CHR(2) for special purposes,
some kind of control characters, and when printing any string,
he did a "compare to 3" instruction. Unfortunately, it was a
signed compare, so all characters in the range 128-255 seemed
to be below 0, and therefore control characters.
The fix was small, just one bit (literally), but it took two days
to find !!
To be fair, this is the only program for the IBM PC that I know of
that has given us any problems like this. The ST on the other hand...
Horror story 2: PageMaker on the Mac.
It seems that the designers of this program decided to use CHR(220)
as meaning "Insert page number here". Unfortunately this character
is used in our alphabet. The result ?
A (almost) useless program.
--
Fridrik Skulason Univ. of Iceland, Computing Center
UUCP ...mcvax!hafro!askja!frisk BIX frisk
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