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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ucbvax!ucdavis!lll-crg!seismo!ut-sally!ut-ngp!shell!graffiti!peter
From: peter@graffiti.UUCP (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: net.internat
Subject: Re: character sets
Message-ID: <309@graffiti.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15-Oct-85 20:13:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: graffiti.309
Posted: Tue Oct 15 20:13:26 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 18-Oct-85 20:00:47 EDT
References: <719@inset.UUCP> <214@rtp47.UUCP>
Organization: The Power Elite, Houston, TX
Lines: 23

7000 Japanese characters... hmmm...

How about using the 8th bit set to indicate that this byte and the following
encode one of 32767 extended characters. (1xxxxxxx 0000000 is illegal here)

In ASCII text file or stream:

	Normal ASCII character: 0xxxxxxx
	Foreign character:	1xxxxxxx xxxxxxxx

In memory or foreign file:

	Normal ascii character:	00000000 xxxxxxxx
	Foreign character:	1xxxxxxx xxxxxxxx
	Null:			00000000 00000000
	Two ASCII characters:	0xxxxxxx 0xxxxxxx

So an ASCII text file is a compressed form of the foreign file. The ascii
character pair should probably be used with caution. Maybe it should just
be undefined.

If this suggestion has already been made (and it probably has, it seems a
pretty obvious way of doing things to me...) just pretend I'm not here.