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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!mcvax!diku!keld
From: keld@diku.UUCP (Keld J|rn Simonsen)
Newsgroups: net.text
Subject: Re: A slightly other suggestion.
Message-ID: <1069@diku.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 20-Jul-85 19:08:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: diku.1069
Posted: Sat Jul 20 19:08:01 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Jul-85 23:22:58 EDT
References: <1065@diku.UUCP> <763@mcvax.UUCP> <1068@diku.UUCP>
Organization: DIKU, U of Copenhagen, DK
Lines: 17
Keywords: ASCII-CODE, National characters, *roff

There are such new ISO standards where all characters in the
8 bit set are defined (almost, I think there are 2 left positions
in there). The scheme is that the lowest 128 positions are equivalent to
ISO 646 international reference version and the upper part corre-
sponding to the *letters* in the lower part, are also letters. And there
is a correspondance between these letters in lower case and in upper
case like in the 7-bit part. You can exchange positions in the 7-bit
part with positions in the 8-bit part so for instance you can have an AE
in the right place (according to the Danish Standard DS 2089). Thus you
have backwards compatibility with ISO 646. I cannot give you the ISO
numbers right now, but I have them somewhere. There is both a Western
European version and an Eastern European version.

But as Kim says, this has nothing to do with the troff special char
discussion I raised. It can of cause be combined at some stage,
but not at the immediate level. Troff is still 7-bit, like the rest of
the world.