Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!sean From: sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) Newsgroups: comp.sources.d Subject: Re: Why does 'stevie' mask the 8th bit ? Message-ID: <14614@s.ms.uky.edu> Date: 19 Mar 90 22:27:11 GMT References: <1581@krafla.rhi.hi.is> <14602@s.ms.uky.edu> <3052@auspex.auspex.com> Organization: The Leaning Tower of Patterson Office @ The Univ. of KY Lines: 48 guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes: |>There are usually good reasons for masking the eighth bit, |No, there aren't. Yes, there are. |>the best being that *most* terminals go haywire when presented with 8 |>bit data. |That's not a very good reason at all. *Most* terminals can run in |7-bits-plus-parity-bit mode, in which case the serial port hardware |strips the 8th bit off for you. *Many* terminals, when presented with |8-bit data, display ISO 8859/1 characters. That's a very good reason, indeed. It makes for a "least common denominator" in a world with many different standards for bit 8. |>7 bits is a very established way of doing things. |So was 6-bit BCD, once. Big deal. So was SIXBIT and a whole bunch of historical standards. Unlike them 7-bit is in common use today. |>What you guys in iceland need is not to require the rest of the world |>to accomodate you, but for you to accomodate the rest of the world. |No, what we guys in the US need is not to require the rest of the world |to accomodate our crufty 7-bit software, but for us to accomodate the |rest of the world by letting our software support 8-bit (and, at some |point, 16-bit and larger) character sets. What we don't need is 15 different groups of people using 15 different character set standards complaining because US originated software doesn't support 15 different character sets. I'd *love* to have a world standard, and to have a set of guidelines for meeting that standard. Until then, my software is not allowing 8-bit data to be shoved at terminals because only a small percent of terminals are going to be able to make sense out of it. Sean -- *** Sean Casey sean@ms.uky.edu, sean@ukma.bitnet, ukma!sean *** "Well, heck's farr, Jim, it gives mah computer sumthin' to do when *** Ah'm out brandin' capacitors." -DM