🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2435@enea.se> sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
> Also sprach Stavros Macrakis (macrakis@gr.osf.org):
> > I agree that ASCII is the de facto standard, and that it is
> > unrealistic to expect existing 7-bit ASCII programs to be updated to
> > ISO 646.
> 
> What really is the issue in the case of programming language,
> or for that matter a command interpretor, is to not use
> letter that are subject to variation according to ISO 646.
> So it is not really a question of update, it is more a question
> of not raising hinders for use of ISO 646.

Yes, but Stavros is talking about *existing* programs, so how can it
be anything other than a question of updating? (Not that I am for
updating...)


> One may claim that we'd best drop 646 and move on to Latin-1 as
> far as possible. However, this if anything site-dependent. I
> was contracted for two and a half years for a customer where
> 8-bit characters were reality (DEC Multinational, though), but
> now I am at my a major Swedish company and all their equipment 
> seem to be seven-bit.

I wonder which of the following 2 alternatives will be less expensive
to the company in the long run:

 (a) replacing or adjusting the 7-bit hardware, or
 (b) countless frustrating man-hours battling software incompatibility


> At ENEA we mainly have eight-bit terminals, but to what use?
> You cannot use the eighth bit in Emacs.

I find it hard to believe that there is no 8-bit version of Emacs
floating around in Europe. Here in Japan, we have been using 16-bit
characters in Emacs for *years*.


> Mail standards, as
> was posted in comp.std.internat earlier, are explicitly seven-
> bit.

One of the rules of Junet, a Japanese network, is that the 7-bit JIS
code must be used, together with escape sequences to allow mixing with
ASCII. So many organizations convert to JIS before sending messages to
the outside Junet world. They can use 8-bit codes in-house by
installing 8-bit clean versions of sendmail. Also, B-News had to be
updated to allow Escape to pass through.

Of course, it is difficult to get all sites to install the updated
versions of the network software, but "Where there is a will, there is
a way", as they say. And the Japanese had one hell of a will.
-
-- 
Erik M. van der Poel                                      erik@sra.co.jp
Software Research Associates, Inc., Tokyo, Japan     TEL +81-3-3234-2692