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From: frisk@rhi.hi.is (Fridrik Skulason)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: ALED goes to the wastebasket here in Iceland
Message-ID: <3253@krafla.rhi.hi.is>
Date: 15 Jun 91 22:42:29 GMT
References: <27098@as0c.sei.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: frisk@rhi.hi.is (Fridrik Skulason)
Organization: University of Iceland (RHI)
Lines: 31

In article <27098@as0c.sei.cmu.edu> df@sei.cmu.edu (Dan Farmer) writes:
>  This is rediculous -- just because something doesn't suit *your*
>needs doesn't mean that it's "a waste of disk space".  What an
>egocentric view -- perhaps the author doesn't care if his program
>is used by whiners in the frozen north. 

No, he obviously did not expect it to be used anywhere but in the US - well,
maybe people in Australia and New Zealand can use editors which do not support
8-bit characters on a PC, but the rest of the world cannot. Even the British
use one character in the upper half of the character set - the pound sign.

What would you say if I wrote (and posted) an editor which did not allow
you to use C,Q,W or Z - after all, we don't use those letters, so nobody
else could possibly have any use for them, right ?

>... but just because it lacks a feature you want, that perhaps isn't
>needed by the target audience of the programmer, it is basically trash.  

Feature ?

The ability of PC programs to support 8 bit characters is not a feature - it
is an essential requirement.  Any program which does not is trash!  

>I think it looks like a fine editing program -- but even if I hated it,
>what good would flaming it here do me?

Well, my reason for flaming is simple - perhaps I might reach the ears of
some American programmers (well, nobody else writes 7-bit PC programs) who
are not yet aware that this is an 8-bit world :-)

-frisk