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From: covert@covert.enet.dec.com (John R. Covert)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts,soc.culture.german
Subject: Re: Umlaute [was: naive (...question about uncial...) ]
Message-ID: <22829@shlump.lkg.dec.com>
Date: 22 May 91 14:05:09 GMT
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Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
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In article <HOLLEY.91May21183931@fog.sono.uucp>, holley@sono.uucp (Greg Holley)
 writes...
> 
>There aren't that many diacrital marks and unique letters in the
>Western European languages, and many computer programs I use are able
>to use them.  The only problem is that, in the absence of an
>international 8-bit standard, the programs can't trade umlauts and
>tildes with one another.  The solution is to come up with a standard,
>rather than to ban the marks and make the world blander.

There is an international standard.  ISO Latin-1 (it has a four digit
number I can't remember right now) handles the most common Western
European languages.  All currently sold DEC terminals (and many others)
support the language, as does almost all software (editors, document
preparation tools, mail programs, conference software) running under VMS.

Unfortunately, the RFCs for internet mail, as well as almost all U*x
software, insist on stripping off the eighth bit.

/john