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From: sommar@enea.UUCP (Erland Sommarskog)
Newsgroups: net.internat
Subject: Re: Are the funny letters really needed?
Message-ID: <1171@enea.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 15-Feb-86 14:31:38 EST
Article-I.D.: enea.1171
Posted: Sat Feb 15 14:31:38 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 17-Feb-86 05:51:57 EST
References: <173@decvax.UUCP> <73400002@unido.UUCP>
Reply-To: sommar@enea.UUCP (Erland Sommarskog)
Distribution: net
Organization: Enea Data, Sweden
Lines: 32

In article <73400002@unido.UUCP> hmm@unido.UUCP writes:
>Right now, I'm using an Atari 520 ST to write this response.
>We have plenty of them at our university as terminals.
>This neat machine is delivered with a national keyboard only,
>which is a real hassle for us.  We are used to the american
>layout and character set (Imagine a C program with umlaut-a
>and umlaut-u as left and right brace).  So we have patched the
>bios of the atari to generate the 'right' keycodes and have put
>little sticker with the 'right' characters onto the keycaps.
>Not the real thing, though.  They loosen after some time and
>have to be replaced (especially the often-used ones, like /?).
>So much about national keyboards...
>
>	Hans-Martin Mosner <hmm@unido.uucp>
>	University of Dortmund


NONONONONONONONONONO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The problem is of course not the national keyboard, it's the programming
language. Using characters like {} that actually are letters in other
languages is nothing but a crime. (Well, C is criminal anyway I think, 
but that's another story.) And if the bloody stupid langauge must use
these symbols, it also have to provide alternatives. E.g. most Pascal-
compilers allow you to use (. .) instead of [] and (* *) to replace {}.

(And talking about Pascal-compilers and national lanuages, I remember
the first one I worked with. It was for Univac 1100 and was developed
at the University if Copenhagen in Denmark. If started your program
with the directive (*$DANSK*), the compiler accepted ][\ (which are 
letters in Scandinavian ASCII:s) as letter in identifiers. Of course
their normal use were disabled then. (DANSK if you wonder means "Danish"
in Danish. I loved that very much.)