dcarson@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu (David Carson) (06/16/89)
I work on a Sun 3/50 and have a font which is bilingual in nature. The low order characters (the normal 7-bit ASCII chars) are English and the high order chars (top bit set) are Greek. Therefore, I should be able to switch nicely between the two without having to change fonts. I have figured out how to enter and display the high order chars on the Sun (see note at end on this, for those interested). Now I want to be able to do something useful with the font like edit a file with it!!! I will have to admit that I use "vi" and take my chances on the flames that will result. Does anyone know how to set up "vi" so that it can handle a file that contains chars with the 8th bit set as an ASCII file. (By default, "vi" calls this a non-ASCII file, and therefore it cannot be edited.) I don't think I'm quite ready to be converted to another editor yet, though soon I will be (when I finish my master's). Do other editors allow editing of such files? * What I know about accessing the high order chars: Open a window specifying the appropriate font. Run the Bourne shell (Yes that's right. For some reason, the C shell chokes on this.) Allow 8 bit chars by typing: stty pass8 Type any letter with the "Left" or "Right" key depressed. The resulting character output will be the char in the same position in the high order of the font. If you have a file with such characters in it, these will be displayed as such also, when, for example, you do a "cat." Type: stty -pass8 to terminate 8-bit mode Kill the Bourne shell (unless you are some kind of masochist and like the Bourne shell).
lars@iclswe.UUCP (Lars Tunkrans) (06/21/89)
In article <18473@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu> dcarson@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu (David Carson) writes: >I work on a Sun 3/50 and have a font which is bilingual in nature. >The low order characters (the normal 7-bit ASCII chars) are English >and the high order chars (top bit set) are Greek. Therefore, I should be >able to switch nicely between the two without having to change fonts. > >I have figured out how to enter and display the high order chars >on the Sun (see note at end on this, for those interested). >Now I want to be able to do something useful with the font >like edit a file with it!!! > >I will have to admit that I use "vi" and take my chances on the >flames that will result. Does anyone know how to set up "vi" >so that it can handle a file that contains chars with the 8th bit >set as an ASCII file. (By default, "vi" calls >this a non-ASCII file, and therefore it cannot be edited.) It is probably not trivial to find a version of an 8-bit version of vi that will run on your system. American computer manufacturers mostly forget that there are other languages than English in the world. However the Europe based ( I think ) standardisation organisation X/OPEN has now specified that the text-handling Unix utilities shall be 8-bit and use the ISO 8859/1 character set which includes most of the different non- English characters found in European languages. Unfortunatly Greek is a compleatly different ballgame since it does not use the Latin alphabet. The box I am running news on is one of the first systems that is a full 8-bit implementations of Unix, The ICL DRS300 80386 based machine running sVr3.1. Can't be demonstrated over the net though since there are a few 7-bit systems between you and me. -- Lars -- // ///// /// | Lars Tunkrans Distributed Resource Systems support. // /// /// | UUCP: {uunet,mcvax,munnari,cernvax,diku,inria,prlb2,tut /// /// /// | ,ukc,unido} !sunic!iclswe!lars Phone +46 (0)76096368 /// ///// /////// | ( Standard Disclaimer )
bengsig@oracle.nl (Bjorn Engsig) (06/21/89)
From article <193@iclswe.UUCP> by lars@iclswe.UUCP (Lars Tunkrans): |the ISO 8859/1 character set which includes most of the different non- |English characters found in European languages. Unfortunatly Greek is a |compleatly different ballgame since it does not use the Latin alphabet. Yes, but one of the other ISO 8859/N character sets has the greek alphabet in it, and using a terminal with both latin and greek alphabets should do the trick, (if such a thing exists) | |The box I am running news on is one of the first systems that is a full |8-bit implementations of Unix, The ICL DRS300 80386 based machine running |sVr3.1. You should also mention HP-UX and AIX here, and probably others. As far as I know, all SysV.3.1 based have the 8-bit support. -- Bjorn Engsig, ORACLE Europe \ / "Hofstadter's Law: It always takes Path: mcvax!orcenl!bengsig X longer than you expect, even if you Domain: bengsig@oracle.nl / \ take into account Hofstadter's Law"
jewett@hpl-opus.HP.COM (Bob Jewett) (06/22/89)
> >Does anyone know how to set up "vi" > >so that it can handle a file that contains chars with the 8th bit > >set as an ASCII file. > > It is probably not trivial to find a version of an 8-bit version of vi > that will run on your system. American computer manufacturers mostly forget > that there are other languages than English in the world. Hewlett-Packard presently supports 8-bit and 16-bit characters in vi, as well as various other tools, such as "sort"*, as part of NLS (Natural Language System). I use roman8 8-bit often, mostly to access special characters, like 1/2, and +-. Other 8-bit character sets include kana8, arabic8, turkish8, and greek8, but I've never tried them. (People who speak Indo-european languages mostly forget that there are languages in the world not based on alphabets. (;-) Bob * (according to the documentation) in Swedish "a-circle" sorts after "z", while in German, it follows "a", and Canadian French upper-cases c-cedilla to C-cedilla, while (European) French drops the cedilla when upper-casing. [not an official statement of the Hewlett-Packard Company]
prc@erbe.se (Robert Claeson) (06/22/89)
In article <18473@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu> dcarson@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu (David Carson) writes: >I will have to admit that I use "vi" and take my chances on the >flames that will result. Does anyone know how to set up "vi" >so that it can handle a file that contains chars with the 8th bit >set as an ASCII file. (By default, "vi" calls >this a non-ASCII file, and therefore it cannot be edited.) The machine I'm writing this on, an Encore Multimax running UMAX V (System V Release 3.1) has a vi that can handle 8-bit characters. Whenever it encounters an 8-bit character in "type-in" mode, it is printed as an octal number like in the C programming language (ie, "\0253"). When I hit the Escape key to go out of insert (or whatever) mode, or press Return while in insert mode, the line is rewritten to show the true characters (ie, u-umlaut instead of the octal variety). As far as I know, this is the way that vi works on all SVR3.1 systems. As for your Sun, I don't think there's much you can do except for switching to some other editor (or wait for SVR4 to appear on it). I currently use MicroEmacs 3.9e, with the "strip-the-eight-bit" mask removed from the keyboard input function. Works like a charm with the ISO 8859/1 8-bit character set. -- Robert Claeson E-mail: rclaeson@erbe.se ERBE DATA AB
leech@Apple.COM (Jonathan Patrick Leech) (06/25/89)
In article <193@iclswe.UUCP> lars@iclswe.UUCP (Lars Tunkrans) writes: >It is probably not trivial to find a version of an 8-bit version of vi >that will run on your system. American computer manufacturers mostly forget >that there are other languages than English in the world. This is not neccessarily a bad thing, from my point of view. DEC's incredibly brain-damaged LK201 keyboard may be partially attributed to internationalization. I have not the least interest in non-English keyboards and wish they had kept American users in mind in this case. -- Jon Leech (leech@apple.com) Apple Integrated Systems __@/
bink@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Ubben Greg) (06/25/89)
In article <739@ecrcvax.UUCP> Diomidis Spinellis writes: > In article <18473@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu> David Carson writes: >> ... >> Does anyone know how to set up "vi" so that it can handle a file that >> contains chars with the 8th bit set as an ASCII file? > ... > On a last count vi had a hard coded mask for the lower 7 bits in at least > 46 different places. Thus using it or modifying it for an 8 bit character > set is not trivial. > ... Ok, so the SVR2 version of vi can't handle non-ASCII files. What I really want is a way to make vi work with a weird terminal type we have where all the CONTROL CODES (such as "move up one line") are above 0200. This is the only thing keeping us from using vi on our terminals. The terminfo entry is correct (curses works fine), but vi insists on stripping the 8th bit. Is the answer to this any easier than for getting vi to work with 8-bit files? (We are using SVR2 Unix.) -- Greg Ubben bink@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu
ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) (06/25/89)
In article <32661@apple.Apple.COM> leech@Apple.COM (Jonathan Patrick Leech) writes: >This is not neccessarily a bad thing, from my point of view. I have not >the least interest in non-English keyboards and wish they had kept >American users in mind in this case. As everyone with an IQ of more than 127 knows, GAWD proclaimed that anyone who did not speak ASCII with an American accent was bound to go to hell, the opinions of Europeans, Japanese, Chinese, Indians, and ninety-plus percent of the computer-using bodies on this planet notwithstanding.
leech@Apple.COM (Jonathan Patrick Leech) (06/25/89)
In article <25745@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) writes: >In article <32661@apple.Apple.COM> leech@Apple.COM (Jonathan Patrick Leech) writes: >>This is not neccessarily a bad thing, from my point of view. I have not >>the least interest in non-English keyboards and wish they had kept >>American users in mind in this case. >As everyone with an IQ of more than 127 knows, GAWD proclaimed that anyone >who did not speak ASCII with an American accent was bound to go to hell, >the opinions of Europeans, Japanese, Chinese, Indians, and ninety-plus >percent of the computer-using bodies on this planet notwithstanding. As anyone who read the complete text of my posting will realize, your comment is completely irrelevant to mine. I referred to keyboards, not character sets. -- Jon Leech (leech@apple.com) Apple Integrated Systems __@/
ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) (06/25/89)
In article <32663@apple.Apple.COM> leech@Apple.COM (Jonathan Patrick Leech) writes: >In article <25745@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) writes: >>In article <32661@apple.Apple.COM> leech@Apple.COM (Jonathan Patrick Leech) writes: >>As everyone with an IQ of more than 127 knows, GAWD proclaimed that anyone >>who did not speak ASCII with an American accent was bound to go to hell, >>the opinions of Europeans, Japanese, Chinese, Indians, and ninety-plus >>percent of the computer-using bodies on this planet notwithstanding. > > As anyone who read the complete text of my posting will realize, >your comment is completely irrelevant to mine. I referred to >keyboards, not character sets. Wellllll, pardon me for jerking your chain. I should have realized that anyone affiliated with "Apple Integrated Systems" must have an inside track to GAWD. Nevertheless, as an American (three generations on the maternal side, five generations on the paternal side), I still have a dim awareness that not all of the world ~types~ American acented ascii. Indeed, true red-blooded, DAR-certified American that I am, there are times (about every two or three minutes) when I wish that ~keyboard~ manufacturers realized that not everyone was typing the names of generic wasps (smith, jones, leech, etc.) into an airline reservation system. I'd like a nice, neat way of typing some real god damn foreigner names without twisting my fingers in knots. Finally, on the principle that a barking dog ought to really have something to bark about, let me observe, as a specialist in modern Japanese history, that Apple Fornicated (or otherwise) Systems has an almost zero presence in the world's second largest computer market. Even the Intentionally Banal Machines Corporation can do better than that (about 27 percent better).
leech@Apple.COM (Jonathan Patrick Leech) (06/26/89)
In article <25753@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) writes: >Wellllll, pardon me for jerking your chain. I should have realized that >anyone affiliated with "Apple Integrated Systems" must have an inside >track to GAWD. Nevertheless, as an American (three generations on the >maternal side, five generations on the paternal side), I still have a >dim awareness that not all of the world ~types~ American acented ascii. >Indeed, true red-blooded, DAR-certified American that I am, there are >times (about every two or three minutes) when I wish that ~keyboard~ >manufacturers realized that not everyone was typing the names of >generic wasps (smith, jones, leech, etc.) into an airline reservation >system. > >I'd like a nice, neat way of typing some real god damn foreigner names >without twisting my fingers in knots. Fine. I'd like a nice, neat way of typing control-A and ESC without twisting my fingers in knots, characters I need to type far more often than "god damn foreigner names." Internationalized keyboards don't tend to provide this capability, which was the point I tried to make. >Finally, on the principle that a barking dog ought to really have >something to bark about, let me observe, as a specialist in modern >Japanese history, that Apple Fornicated (or otherwise) Systems has an >almost zero presence in the world's second largest computer market. >Even the Intentionally Banal Machines Corporation can do better than >that (about 27 percent better). Once again, your gratuitous obscenities are unrelated to my original posting. The only person whose "chain was jerked" here is yourself. Try reading the Usenet posting guidelines sometime. This is completely irrelevant to comp.editors at this point. Followups redirected to alt.flame. -- Jon Leech (leech@apple.com) Apple Integrated Systems __@/
guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) (06/28/89)
> Fine. I'd like a nice, neat way of typing control-A and ESC >without twisting my fingers in knots, characters I need to type far >more often than "god damn foreigner names." Internationalized >keyboards don't tend to provide this capability, which was the point I >tried to make. The problem of control and ESC keys, and of internationalized keyboards, are separate. Some vendors have either eliminated the ESC key or put it somewhere other than e.g. to the left of the (! 1) key; they may have done so to match some international standards. However, it is *NOT* necessary to do this for US keyboard layouts; other vendors have internationalized keyboards that, at least in the US layout, don't stick ESC off in the hinterlands or put an extra key between Shift and Z, for example.
diomidis@ecrcvax.UUCP (Diomidis Spinellis) (07/22/89)
In article <18473@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu> dcarson@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu (David Carson) writes: >I work on a Sun 3/50 and have a font which is bilingual in nature. >The low order characters (the normal 7-bit ASCII chars) are English >and the high order chars (top bit set) are Greek. Therefore, I should be >able to switch nicely between the two without having to change fonts. >[...] >Does anyone know how to set up "vi" >so that it can handle a file that contains chars with the 8th bit >set as an ASCII file. (By default, "vi" calls >this a non-ASCII file, and therefore it cannot be edited.) Many versions of vi check the magic number (the first two bytes in the file) before reading the file. One of the checks performed is to see if any of those first two characters has the high bit set. If this is the case the error ``Non-ascii file'' is reported. Even if you succeeded in making vi read such a file you would still have the problem of displaying it and entering characters. On a last count vi had a hard coded mask for the lower 7 bits in at least 46 different places. Thus using it or modifying it for an 8 bit character set is not trivial. I think the next (or the following ones) major releases of SunOS and System V are supposed (among other things) to fully support 8 bit character sets. >I don't think I'm quite ready to be converted to another editor >yet, though soon I will be (when I finish my master's). Do >other editors allow editing of such files? Emacs (as one would expect) does. Diomidis -- Diomidis Spinellis European Computer-Industry Research Centre (ECRC) Arabellastrasse 17, D-8000 Muenchen 81, West Germany +49 (89) 92699199 USA: diomidis%ecrcvax.uucp@pyramid.pyramid.com ...!pyramid!ecrcvax!diomidis Europe: diomidis@ecrcvax.uucp ...!unido!ecrcvax!diomidis
ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) (07/22/89)
The version of vi supplied with the MKS Toolkit for MSDOS handles the extended charcter set.
debra@alice.UUCP (Paul De Bra) (08/02/89)
>... I think the next (or the following ones) major releases >of SunOS and System V are supposed (among other things) to fully support >8 bit character sets. As I recall vi in System V r3.2 handles 8 bit characters. This does *not* imply that it can be used as a binary editor though. Line length is still limited. Paul. -- ------------------------------------------------------ |debra@research.att.com | uunet!research!debra | ------------------------------------------------------
irf@kuling.UUCP (Bo Thide') (08/03/89)
In article <9723@alice.UUCP> debra@alice.UUCP () writes: >>... I think the next (or the following ones) major releases >>of SunOS and System V are supposed (among other things) to fully support >>8 bit character sets. > >As I recall vi in System V r3.2 handles 8 bit characters. >This does *not* imply that it can be used as a binary editor though. >Line length is still limited. > >Paul. The HP-UX version of 'vi' correctly handles 7, 8 and 16 bit characters and has done so for many HP-UX releases now. I use it all the time to produce documents in Swedish (I use 'vi' as a word processor..!) and get the correct national Swedish glyphs displayed on the screen as well as the correct ASCII codes (127-255) on the file. The HP-UX 'vi' even knows about case shifting with '~' for those characters. Very neat! ^ Bo Thide'-------------------------------------------------------------- | | Swedish Institute of Space Physics, S-755 91 Uppsala, Sweden |I| [In Swedish: Institutet f|r RymdFysik, Uppsalaavdelningen (IRFU)] |R| Phone: (+46) 18-403000. Telex: 76036 (IRFUPP S). Fax: (+46) 18-403100 /|F|\ INTERNET: bt@irfu.se UUCP: ...!uunet!sunic!irfu!bt ~~U~~ -----------------------------------------------------------------sm5dfw
guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) (08/04/89)
>>... I think the next (or the following ones) major releases >>of SunOS and System V are supposed (among other things) to fully support >>8 bit character sets. > >As I recall vi in System V r3.2 handles 8 bit characters. The one in S5R3.1 does, and the one in the next SunOS minor release (i.e., 4.1 - the next major release would presumably be called 5.0) is based on the S5R3.1 one and as such should support 8-bit character sets. (It did when I tried it, anyway....)