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From: einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: Unicode: Details Please
Keywords: multilingual Unicode character set
Message-ID: <2786@krafla.rhi.hi.is>
Date: 16 Feb 91 00:42:27 GMT
References: <1991Feb14.001842.24415@progress.com> <405@ceco.ceco.com>
Reply-To: einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason)
Organization: University of Iceland (RHI)
Lines: 48

In article <405@ceco.ceco.com> garry@ceco.ceco.com (Garry Garrett) writes:
>positive logic circuts rather than negitve logic)  IMHO, many of the 
>problems that programmers face with character sets (ASCII & EBCDIC) are
>that they were designed by engineers who were (naturally) more concerned

And more often than not, they came from the USA.  Not from Europe, (or 
Iceland for that matter), because there is no thought in many 'standard'
character sets for those that have to use some characters outside of the
7 bit range.  Therefore some programmers thought:  "it is allright to
mask the 8th bit.  Nobody uses it!!"  
Well, they are wrong!!!   (Please don't mask the 8th bit!)


>	As for my thoughts on a NEW character set, there is no reason why 
>all written languages could not be included.	There are also a wealth of
>special characters that could be included, making people of various professions
>that use computers, jobs easier.  Symbols like less-than-or-equal-to and 
>not-equal-to, could make every programmer's job easier.  Meteorology has alot

A new character set?  Fine with me, as long as we can use all our 36 (not 26,
but 36) characters, plus the numericals and other 'non-letters'
Of those 36 letters that we, here in Iceland, uses, there are 10 upper case
and 10 lower case characters that *must* be placed in the higher half of ASCII
set.
Perhaps you might understand our frustration when we must put a whole lot of
people, (that could be doing some other things), into 'icelandify' a bunch of
*badly* written software :-(
(Think what will happen when the need for 16bit character set starts to spread
out?)

>accepted.  If any of you out there have some ideas for things that may be
>included in my character set, please e-mail them to me.  I still plan
>on working on this unless I get some more info on Unicode, and it does
>have some forthought to it.
>

Here is an idea:  (no offence ment)
	don't mask the 8th bit.  (or the 16th bit?)





--
Internet:    einari@rhi.hi.is        |   "Just give me my command line and drag
UUCP:    ..!mcsun!isgate!rhi!einari  |   the GUIs to the waste basket!!!!"

Surgeon Generals warning:  Masking the 8th bit can seriously damage your brain!!