Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!pa.dec.com!jrdzzz.jrd.dec.com!tkou02.enet.dec.com!jit345!diamond From: diamond@jit345.swstokyo.dec.com (Norman Diamond) Newsgroups: comp.std.c Subject: Re: wchar_t values Message-ID: <1991Apr8.011657.1780@tkou02.enet.dec.com> Date: 8 Apr 91 01:16:57 GMT References: <1991Apr4.171657.27791@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <15737@smoke.brl.mil> Sender: usenet@tkou02.enet.dec.com (USENET News System) Reply-To: diamond@jit345.enet@tkou02.enet.dec.com (Norman Diamond) Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation Japan , Tokyo Lines: 21 In article <15737@smoke.brl.mil> gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) writes: >In article peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes: >>Why can't the Danes define a character set, and preprocess it into trigraphs >>for compilation? There's no reason the editing character set needs to match >>the character set the compiler sees. > >Exactly right. For exactly the same reason that Americans weren't told to write a preprocessor to convert C into Algol. Some people believe that an international C standard might be as useful as an international Algol standard, so it would be nice if C could be WRITTEN and READ in a standard way, independently of transmission and other issues. (Some of these people originally misinterpreted the purpose of trigraphs, but have figured out their error. Some of their opponents, who believe that the C language should differ from country to country, misinterpreted the purpose of the Danish proposal and have yet to understand their error.) -- Norman Diamond diamond@tkov50.enet.dec.com If this were the company's opinion, I wouldn't be allowed to post it.