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From: jbvb@FTP.COM ("James B. Van Bokkelen")
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: Re: NCSA - Telnet with ansi and extended keyboard support ?
Message-ID: <9101161903.AA00149@ftp.com>
Date: 16 Jan 91 19:03:31 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: jbvb@ftp.com
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 16


    Anything that tries to do anything with ISO 8859 (other than including
    a user installable mapping to it using 3. above, of course) is asking for 
    big trouble and big hate mail. Microsoft got this problem when they
    didn't use the standard IBM-PC character set for Windows.

My European customers have been quite appreciative of our 8859-1 support.
Presumably DEC's customers have been, as well.  My point is that the IBM
PC display code points *will not* win out over the victor of the battle
between Unicode and the replacement for ISO 646.  However much better it
is, 8-bit characters are not enough for multi-lingual applications, and
the "big char" replacement (16 or 32 bits) will be 8859-compatible.  Thus,
the IBM coding is a dead end.

James B. VanBokkelen		26 Princess St., Wakefield, MA  01880
FTP Software Inc.		voice: (617) 246-0900  fax: (617) 246-0901