Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!mintaka!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!dkuug!rcbal!ej
From: ej@rci.dk (Erik W. Jeppesen)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: ALED goes to the wastebasket here in Iceland
Message-ID: <1991Jun17.090058.4100@rci.dk>
Date: 17 Jun 91 09:00:58 GMT
References: <3245@krafla.rhi.hi.is> <4090@sixhub.UUCP>
Organization: RC International, Copenhagen, Denmark
Lines: 32

davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) writes:

>I thought it left all 8 bits alone in the file. You may have to use
>sequences to enter them, but ....                   ^^^
                          ^^^
and in another posting:

>... the fact that it won't handle special characters is regretable, but ...
                                   ^^^^^^^
The letter 'q' is practically not used in danish. How would you like to
have to enter this 'special' letter as ALT-1-3-3 ?

I don't mean to flame Bill, but when a highly respected american as Wm E.
Davidsen Jr expresses his view in this way, it shows the problem.

As others have pointed out, this is not an isolated icelandic problem.
Nearly all european countries have characters besides the letters a-z and 
there isn't anything special about them.

I couldn't care less if a shareware editor didn't support 8-bit characters
(I simply won't use it), but it is a general problem with programs originated
in the US. WordPerfect and others have learnt it (the hard way).

We don't need any special handling for special characters. The keyboard
driver will let us type them, so just leave them alone. That will solve most
problems. If you want to be real nice, use the tables that DOS supplies 
for case-mapping and collation.

Thanks for reading,
-- 
Erik W. Jeppesen          ej@rci.dk         +45 42 65 80 00
RC International, Lautrupbjerg 1, DK-2750 Ballerup, Denmark