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Newsgroups: mod.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Submission for mod-protocols-tcp-ip
Message-ID: <12279312440.8.MRC@PANDA>
Date: Sun, 15-Feb-87 15:37:48 EST
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Posted: Sun Feb 15 15:37:48 1987
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     I don't know what is done with Chinese or Korean, but Japanese
uses a 14-bit character set, using only the values 21h-7Eh (that's
041 to 176 for us octal fans); that is, those values in 7-bit ASCII
that represent printing characters.  An ESCAPE sequence shifts between
ASCII and JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard).

     An alternate means supports katakana only, using either the
eighth bit or ASCII shift codes (SO/SI, a.k.a. CTRL/N and CTRL/O).
Some terminals support both systems; however, the katakana-only
system is obsolete today.

     One must recognize that 8 bits are never enough!  It is perfectly
alright to assign an 8-bit system for your local use, but it is pure
egotism to believe that your 8-bit system is somehow superior to
anyone else's and therefore should be adopted as a standard.  Really,
the eighth bit is best left for parity or undefined for a local
application.  To represent international characters, you need a
larger character set.

     If a vote were taken today, I would vote for JIS.  I believe that
as long as your terminal supports overstriking you can get all the
silly ISO characters using JIS.  In addition, you also get Greek and
Russian.  I'm not sure about Chinese, but JIS includes several thousand
Chinese characters (kanji), most of which aren't generally used in
Japanese.
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