🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <15737@smoke.brl.mil> gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>In article <RFIAQY1@xds13.ferranti.com> peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>>Why can't the Danes define a character set, and preprocess it into trigraphs
>>for compilation? There's no reason the editing character set needs to match
>>the character set the compiler sees.
>
>Exactly right.

For exactly the same reason that Americans weren't told to write a
preprocessor to convert C into Algol.  Some people believe that an
international C standard might be as useful as an international Algol
standard, so it would be nice if C could be WRITTEN and READ in a
standard way, independently of transmission and other issues.

(Some of these people originally misinterpreted the purpose of trigraphs,
but have figured out their error.  Some of their opponents, who believe
that the C language should differ from country to country, misinterpreted
the purpose of the Danish proposal and have yet to understand their error.)
--
Norman Diamond       diamond@tkov50.enet.dec.com
If this were the company's opinion, I wouldn't be allowed to post it.