Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!uupsi!sunic!enea!sommar From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel Subject: Re: Reneging on promises (Internationalization) Message-ID: <2360@enea.se> Date: 7 Jan 91 22:54:27 GMT References: <472@eiffel.UUCP> <2347@enea.se> <474@eiffel.UUCP> Organization: Enea Data AB, Sweden Lines: 86 Also sprach Bertrand Meyer (bertrand@eiffel.UUCP): >The last point is definitely correct. The only standard that >matters is the keyboard that sits on programmers' desks. Different programmers have different keyboards. So does different programmers have different standards? >Eiffel's lexical structure was designed under the assumption >that that keyboard supports upper- and lower-case letters, >digits, plus, minus, divide, asterisk, less than, greater than, >circumflex, period, comma, colon, semicolon, parentheses, >quote, double quote, square brackets, braces, at sign, exclamation >mark, plus two or three others. > >This is a very reasonable assumption, and one that is not >very restrictive; I have to beg to differ. The assumption is only reasonable if we believe that keyboards and terminals are the same everywhere. But we all know that other languages use characters beyond those 26 that makes up the English alphabet. (Even English does!) Why believe that keyboards in other countries would just be bigger to include the needed national characters? For long seven-bit was used for communication and data storage, why believe that all characters in the ASCII set would survive national replacements? If I were to use Bertrand Meyer's reasoning and defined a language which included ][\ as indentifier characters and used }{| as lower- case equivalents. Many people would be confused, and probably hate me as well. No, it is not a good idea to look at your keyboard and think that it defines the world. >I maintain that if hardware >manufacturers and standardization bodies had done their >most elementary job this assumption would be trivially satisfied >in 1990/1991. >... >I am sure ISO 646 is a respectable work but an international >standard does not mean anything if the entire state of the >industry contradicts it. ISO646 is a well-supported standard. For instance, I am writing this message on a VT200-compatible. I can change the keyboard to be any of North American, British, German, French, Danish, Norweigian, Swedish, Swiss-German or Swiss-French in either eight- or seven-bit mode. As I change the mode different characters are also displayed on my screen for those who are subject to change according to ISO646, i.e. $#@[\]^`{|}~. I would expect that if I get a different hardware configuration I get another set of choices. VT200 was introduced in 1984, but was far from first in its field. I have an old manual for HP2621A which reveals the same capabilities, although you have to replace the character generator to change the screen, and of course eight-bit support is missing. I don't how many printers I have enountered who have been able to display various characters according to ISO646 with the help of escape sequences to change between national varieties. I wouldn't mention ISO646 if it was a paper tiger. >But it (Eiffel) cannot be expected to correct >single-handedly the mess accumulated over forty years >of hardware evolution. At this point Bertrand Meyer is starting to sound like Richard Stallman defending Emacs' use of CTRL/S and CTRL/Q contrary to all sensible standard. It is not a mess. It is a standard. It may not be the standard you want it to be. The only time you get a mess is when you ignore the standard. >In fact, a strong argument can be made that, >by the very nature of this issue, it may be best to entrust >its resolution to a committee including >people from diverse backgrounds and countries, rather than >to an individual, even with the help of the net. Certainly. Many people frown upon language commitees and think that a language should be designed by an individual. I am not so sure about this. Is it any wonder Ada does not use any of the untouchable characters? (Well, it does use "|", but "!" is permitted as an alternative. It also uses "#", but since this character is never replaced by a letter it is less sensitive. There is an alternative anyway, ":" I think.) -- Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se "There is only one success, namely to lead your life in your own way" Anyone who can give a source for this?