Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!yfcw14
From: yfcw14@castle.ed.ac.uk (K P Donnelly)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: International character set requirements needed
Keywords: dwb, troff, postscript
Message-ID: <7625@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 19 Dec 90 10:54:07 GMT
References: <1990Dec17.210354.1626@cbnewsl.att.com>
Organization: Edinburgh University Computer Services
Lines: 49

I have come in on this discussion from the outside, but it sounds as if
you have misunderstood the requests.

It sounds to me as if what people are asking for is for troff to stop
stripping the eighth bit off characters in the input file, but instead
to pass them to the output file just like (7-bit) ASCII characters.

There is no need to invent new (7-bit) ASCII representations of non
ASCII characters, such as \ao for a-ring.  Such representations may 
be desirable for other purposes, but that is a separate issue.

Anyone with a VT220 or VT320 terminal can input a-ring using the 
three character sequence  
              <Compose-character> a *
the character gets hexadecimal code E5 in compliance with the ISO
standard for western European languages.  You see it on the screen and
edit it just like any other character using any editor (such as the
version 3.10 of microEmacs) which doesn't strip the eighth bit.
However, it gets very frustrating if the software which gets between you
and the laser printer insists for no good reason on stripping the eighth
bit and turning the a-ring into an 'e' (ASCII code 65 hex).

There is lots of such software around, especially on Unix.  I think it
is something to do with the eighth bit having been used for parity check
in the past, so the software thought it was safest to filter it out. 
Nowadays, with cleaner communications lines, the eighth bit is hardly
ever used for parity check - it wasn't a very good system anyway - and
software packages which in the past have stripped the eighth bit are one
by one changing their policies - witness Kermit 3.0, TeX 3.0, microEmacs
3.10.

The Scandinavians have up til now used "national versions" of ASCII in
which characters like { } ~ | are replaced by national characters like
a-ring.  This often makes their names look weird in mail signatures, and
must cause them a lot of trouble when programming in languages like C
and Pascal.  The Germans use in computing the alternative system of
placing an 'e' after the vowel instead of an umlaut sign above it.  The
French have such a variety of accented characters that in computing
(mail messages and so on) they usually give up and leave out the
accents.  Sometimes they use devices like puting an apostrophe before or
after the vowel to indicate an acute accent.  On the Gaelic language 
bulletin board in which I participate, we always use a slash, '/', after
the vowel to indicate an acute accent.  The Icelanders have many more 
non-ASCII characters in their language than other Scandinavians, 
including some unique ones such as 'eth' and 'thorn' where you can't 
just "leave out the accent", so they have for long been ahead of the 
world in using 8-bit text in their computing.

   Kevin Donnelly