Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!menudo.uh.edu!sugar!peter
From: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: Here's an EASY one for you
Message-ID: <1991Apr21.200938.25760@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Keywords: Lazy, Lame, Arexx, Characters, pointers, Dac.
Organization: Sugar Land Unix -- Houston, TX
References: <18f0bf14.ARN1771@prolix.pub.uu.oz.au> <1080@cbmger.UUCP> <1991Apr21.050018.20966@uncecs.edu>
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 1991 20:09:38 GMT

In article <1991Apr21.050018.20966@uncecs.edu> urjlew@uncecs.edu (Rostyk Lewyckyj) writes:
> Well as we all know almost the whole world except for IBM decided
> some 30 years ago to go with the ASCII-7bit character set.

Actually, in Europe they went with ISO646, a common set of character sets
that is largely the same as ASCII but has a number of optional letters
that differ by country to allow you to use national characters with diacriticals
like umlauts, accents, etc.

> Perhaps it's time to standardize on a larger character set

It's been done: ISO 8859.1, which is what the Amiga uses. A STANDARD 8-bit
character set.

> I would have left it at the one line quip about 7 bit ASCII

Well, that's the whole point. The Amiga uses a standard 8-bit character set,
and your tirade demonstrates why people are tired of people who don't know
what it's all about...
-- 
Peter da Silva.   `-_-'
<peter@sugar.hackercorp.com>.
