Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!kth!sunic!iclswe!lars
From: lars@iclswe.UUCP (Lars Tunkrans)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: Can "vi" handle chars above 127 ASCII?
Summary: X/Open conformant vi
Keywords: X/Open vi
Message-ID: <193@iclswe.UUCP>
Date: 20 Jun 89 21:01:54 GMT
References: <18473@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu>
Reply-To: lars@iclswe.UUCP (Lars Tunkrans)
Organization: ICL Data AB  S-194 85 Upplands-Vasby  SWEDEN
Lines: 38

In article <18473@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu> dcarson@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu (David  Carson) writes:
>I work on a Sun 3/50 and have a font which is bilingual in nature.
>The low order characters (the normal 7-bit ASCII chars) are English
>and the high order chars (top bit set) are Greek.  Therefore, I should be 
>able to switch nicely between the two without having to change fonts.
>
>I have figured out how to enter and display the high order chars
>on the Sun (see note at end on this, for those interested). 
>Now I want to be able to do something useful with the font
>like edit a file with it!!!
>
>I will have to admit that I use "vi" and take my chances on the 
>flames that will result.  Does anyone know how to set up "vi"
>so that it can handle a file that contains chars with the 8th bit 
>set as an ASCII file.  (By default, "vi" calls
>this a non-ASCII file, and therefore it cannot be edited.)

It is probably not trivial to find a version of an 8-bit version of vi 
that will run on your system. American computer manufacturers mostly forget
that there are other languages than English in the world. However the 
Europe based ( I think ) standardisation organisation X/OPEN has now 
specified that the text-handling Unix utilities shall be 8-bit and use 
the ISO 8859/1 character set which includes most of the different non-
English characters found in European languages. Unfortunatly Greek is a
compleatly different ballgame since it does not use the Latin alphabet.

The box I am running news on is one of the first systems that is a full 
8-bit implementations of Unix, The ICL DRS300 80386 based machine running
sVr3.1. Can't be demonstrated over the net though since there are a few 
7-bit systems between you and me.

-- Lars

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