Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!ccu.umanitoba.ca!herald.usask.ca!alberta!brazeau.ucs.ualberta.ca!unixg.ubc.ca!ubc-cs!uw-beaver!milton!dali.cs.montana.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!dog.ee.lbl.gov!hellgate.utah.edu!fcom.cc.utah.edu!cc.usu.edu!jrd From: jrd@cc.usu.edu (Joe R. Doupnik) Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d Subject: Message-ID: <1991Jun16.184211.48122@cc.usu.edu> Date: 17 Jun 91 00:42:11 GMT References: <3245@krafla.rhi.hi.is> <1991Jun15.124052.17827@cbfsb.att.com> Organization: Utah State University Lines: 66 In article , nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) writes: > In article <1991Jun15.124052.17827@cbfsb.att.com> mbb@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (martin.brilliant) writes: > > From article <3245@krafla.rhi.hi.is>, by einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason): > > Why? It does not allow me to type the Icelandic characters as I would > > normally!!!! > > We have a large world here, and Iceland is a small country. If we all > knew how Icelandic characters are normally entered in an Icelandic > editor, more editors would provide for the entry of Icelandic characters. > > How about it, you non-English speakers? Give us English-speaking programmers > a break and tell us what we need to do to get our programs to work on your > computers... > > -- > --russ I'm proud to be a humble Quaker. > I am leaving the employ of Clarkson as of June 30. Hopefully this email > address will remain. If it doesn't, use nelson@gnu.ai.mit.edu. ------------------------------ Not to start a thread in this section of News, but... What non-USA folks need is support of Code Pages as a start. In addition to the conventional Code Pages we need to support the very much larger number deliniated by IBM (but basically unheard of by nearly everyone inside and outside of IBM) for the countries that IBM/Microsoft do not touch via DOS. Code Pages, in case you skipped that part of the DOS manual, are objects which load a new font (character set and the dots to compose the pictures of them) into the display adapter (EGA and above), revise the keyboard, and put the fonts into the printer (IBM printers only). Most of this is documented in the DOS Tech Ref manual from IBM, with some exceptions. The most important exception is the internal detail used by COUNTRY.SYS to recognize Code Pages other than the small set shipped with DOS. As openers Code Page CP 850 is needed to handle most (not all, but most) European character sets. Code Pages take memory, and they can be tricky to manipulate within a program, and the instructions to load/switch them are nearly opaque (it can be done, we'd accomplished the feat). While it would be nice to have one's program "speak in tongues" there's much more to this than Code Pages. For example, to provide a msg in French/German/Icelandic/... takes the correct words and word order, and the space to present them. IBM has some nifty guidelines on all of these matters but the orientation is naturally that of much available memory. In addition to these matters the program needs to use the keyboard at and above the Bios level so that Code Pages can be active, and the handling of text information needs to be 8-bit clean (no more chopping the high bit). I should add that things like decimal points, currency parsing, time/dates need to track the Code Page information to be natural in the target environment. By now most serious programmers are groaning, and rightly so. I've been through the exercise and I'm not done yet (MS-DOS Kermit does the above but needs even more extensions). Confusion sets in when information leaks out of the program to nasty places like disk files and communications lines: what bytes need be transmitted/received? MS-DOS Kermit uses ISO 2022 conventions to employ in-line signaling of character sets etc, and that too takes space in the program. So, not to sound xenophobic, but the software commerical marketplace for the major products is dominated by English and keeping down the size of programs and files to merely huge. In time writers will find ways of separating the msg text from the code and allowing some national variations. There are limits on all of this imposed by text length and mixing languages on the same line. Those of us in the Kermit project have been wrestling with the national language issue for a couple of years now and are not done yet. Joe D. P.S. For fun, tell MSK SET TERMINAL DIRECTION RIGHT-TO-LEFT.