🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <26644@ism780c.isc.com> greger@ism780b.UUCP (Greger Leijonhufvud) writes:
>In article <Apr.19.10.41.28.1989.7554@paul.rutgers.edu> halldors@paul.rutgers.edu (Magnus M Halldorsson) writes:
>>The ISO 8859 character sets specify sets for specific languages. Now
>>what if one wants to use a combination of those? Is there any standard
>>for storing, representing, and switching between various (ISO)
>>character sets? What if one wants to allow for Japanese or Chinese as
>>well?
>[discussion of EUC and other Unix-flavored proposals]
>There are also other encoding schemes, by Sun, Xerox and other
>companies.
>
>There is, however, no standard as yet. Unfortunately. But, from V.4,
>you should be able to mix Icelandic with Bulgarian, and get your
>Greek quotations OK, too.
There has been an ISO scheme for mixing code sets for some time now.
ISO 2022-1973 specified basically unlimited code-extension
techniques, and you can use either 7-bit or 8--bit ASCII to carry it in.
(The 7-bit scheme has a shifting scheme for getting to the other
codes that would normally have bit 8 set).  Although it can be a little
painful, there are alphabet registration systems that allow international
identification of the code used in the code stream itself.  You can use
the code identification procedure to switch the 7/8-bit "window" over those
codes you want to use at any particular time.

When the special 8-bit character codes that are talked about here
become approved, there will presumably also be internationally approved
"announcement sequences" for shifting in and out of them.

This works for communication better than for internal processing, of
course.  For what you want to see *internally* in a particular
computer system, I suppose POSIX and other standards will have to
make provision (and the C Language will become interesting, too).  But for
interchange purposes via 7/8-bit data streams, all of the machinery has
been defined for some time, including the procedure for international
registration of special code tables.


-- Dennis E. Hamilton {uucp: ... !rochester!cci632!sjfc!deh0654}
	Robert Anson Heinlein, 1907-1988
	May the First Muster always answer to your names.