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In article <1498@sics.se> dan@sics.se (Dan Sahlin) writes:
>Most of all, there is a standardised way of switching between coding
>standards called ISO 2022. The European Computer Manufacturers Association
>(ECMA) has registered about 100 character sets according to ISO 2022 and
>the standard for registering new standards (!) ISO 2373.
>Since among these, we find the various 8859 versions, there is a
>standardised way to switch between them.  You will also find the Arabic,
>Hebrew and Cyrillic character sets in the ECMA register.

Yes, there are escape sequences for selecting any set, and I agree that
this is an appropriate way to represent sequential data, but what if you
want to access portions of the text randomly in memory? Is the programmer
supposed to search the file from the beginning for the latest set switch
when he want to know whether the byte 68 in position 4711 is a capital E
with grave accent (as in registration 123) or the second byte in a small
Greek delta (as in registration 58)? Is it the programmer's task to
provide for efficiency by creating his own internal data structures, or
will ISO 2022 eventually be more specific on implementation demands (such
as repeating the escape sequence within certain intervals, although there
is no change in character set)? For instance, ISO 2022 doesn't tell me
how to interpret the first byte of a file, unless it's an escape sign.
Have I missed some page of their documentation?
-- 
Anders Andersson, Dept. of Computer Systems, Uppsala University, Sweden
Phone: +46 18 183170
UUCP: andersa@kuling.UUCP (...!{seismo,mcvax}!enea!kuling!andersa)