🚀 go-pugleaf

Roy Smith, in 2178@phri, writes:

>I would guess, however, that most European languages would do OK
>without an extended character set.  I'm not saying it wouldn't be ugly, or
>that it wouldn't look funny, or that this would be acceptable for business
>letters.  I'm just saying that the meaning would be clear.  For an ATM,
>that's probably good enough.

Once upon a time, when computers were new and didn't have any funny
letters, a Swedish man refused to pay a bill.  He said that the
bill wasn't made out to him and that he had the right to his own
name.  The courts agreed.

Computers quickly learned the correct alphabet.

There are a number of examples where leaving the "diacritics" off a
word drastically changes its meaning.  For example, if you leave
the ~ off the name of the mayor of Denver, you are calling him
a small dog.

Martin Minow
decvax!minow