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From: gordan@maccs.UUCP (Gordan Palameta)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: Character representation
Message-ID: <718@maccs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 16-Aug-87 22:21:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: maccs.718
Posted: Sun Aug 16 22:21:06 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 17-Aug-87 02:35:43 EDT
References: <2171@enea.UUCP> <8410@utzoo.UUCP> <47@piring.cwi.nl>
Reply-To: gordan@maccs.UUCP (Gordan Palameta)
Organization: DCSS, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Lines: 31

In article <47@piring.cwi.nl> lambert@cwi.nl (Lambert Meertens) writes:
>In article <8410@utzoo.UUCP> henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes:
>) [if the French had invented computers, cedillas would be considered part
>) of "God's plan", but not diereses]
>
>But the French do!  [examples follow]

If the French had invented computers, there is little doubt that a character
set to support French would have appeared sooner.  Such a set might have
supported German as well, and other Western European languages, but it is
hardly likely that it would have supported (in decreasing order of
probability) Scandinavian languages, Eastern European languages, Japanese,
Icelandic eth(?) and thorn(?), Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, etc.

There is no chance that a 16-bit character set would have sprung up, fully
formed -- computer memory used to be very, very expensive (weren't characters
six bits, once upon a time?)

In short, it is difficult to see how the situation would have evolved several
decades after the introduction of FRenchSCII to a point much different from 
what we have today (the ISO 8-bit ASCII sets, JIS standards for Kanji, etc.)

>) Support sustained spaceflight: fight |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
>
> [humorous comment]

Support two line signatures, the money you save may be your own.

-- 
UUCP:  ... !mnetor!lsuc!maccs!gordan              BITNET: GP@TANDEM
"Sumasshedshii vsekh stran, soyedinyaites'"        Gordan Palameta