🚀 go-pugleaf

On the subject of ISO 6937 versus ISO 8859.

6937 may be better than 8859 for some purposes (communication that is),
but as a standard character set for terminals it is useless.

The reason ...

Simple. Most existing software packages assume that (1 char in text =
1 char on screen). Adapting the software to work with a full 256 character
set instead of ASCII may be difficult, but it's still just a minor problem
compared to make 6937 work as a standard computer/terminal character set.

Here in Iceland ISO 8859 is heavily used. It is the only useful standard
that supports all chacters in our alphabet. (ISO 8859/1 - Western Europe that
is - the last time I looked ISO 8859/2 (or was that /3) - for Northern Europe
did not!)

It is available on some personal computers here (Amiga/Atari), on some
terminals (ADM in particular), and a couple of printers.

In fact - just a few days ago we decided that the University would not
buy or support a single piece of equipment that did not support ISO 8859/1.
 
(Meaning - in my case - that I have to work overtime to modify the
$#?!$#?!$!!! terminal emulation on the Macs. (I have already fixed the PCs))

So - in our case at least - 8859/1 is here to stay..


-- 
Fridrik Skulason  Univ. of Iceland, Computing Center
       UUCP  frisk@rhi                                      BIX  frisk

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