Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hpl-opus!jewett
From: jewett@hpl-opus.HP.COM (Bob Jewett)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: Can "vi" handle chars above 127 ASCII?
Message-ID: <62420002@hpl-opus.HP.COM>
Date: 21 Jun 89 23:45:41 GMT
References: <18473@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu>
Organization: HP Labs, High Speed Electronics Dept., Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 25

> >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.
> 
> 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.

Hewlett-Packard presently supports 8-bit and 16-bit characters in vi, as
well as various other tools, such as "sort"*, as part of NLS (Natural
Language System).  I use roman8 8-bit often, mostly to access special
characters, like 1/2, and +-.  Other 8-bit character sets include kana8,
arabic8, turkish8, and greek8, but I've never tried them.

(People who speak Indo-european languages mostly forget that there are
languages in the world not based on alphabets.  (;-)

Bob

* (according to the documentation) in Swedish "a-circle" sorts after
"z", while in German, it follows "a", and Canadian French upper-cases
c-cedilla to C-cedilla, while (European) French drops the cedilla when
upper-casing.

[not an official statement of the Hewlett-Packard Company]