Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!tektronix!teklds!athena!scottha
From: scottha@athena.TEK.COM (Scott Hankerson)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: Character representation
Message-ID: <1583@athena.TEK.COM>
Date: Wed, 19-Aug-87 12:30:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: athena.1583
Posted: Wed Aug 19 12:30:08 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Aug-87 11:07:12 EDT
References: <15381@mordor.s1.gov>
Reply-To: scottha@athena.UUCP (Scott Hankerson)
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR.
Lines: 32
Xref: mnetor sci.lang:1181 comp.std.internat:136

In article <15381@mordor.s1.gov> pom@s1-under.UUCP () writes:
>>>But this doesn't
>>>address all problems I mentioned. How to construct a general character
>>>with an arbitrary accent, umlaut or other diacritic mark? An 8-bit
>>>enumarate isn't sufficient.
>
> The problem you  (somebody) mentioned is hereby addressed.
> To disprove my conjecture, name one language with Latin-based alphabet 
> and one letter in that alphabet, which admits more then one modifier.

In French, one can have up to four different modifiers over a particular
letter (the letter e can have a grave accent, one going the other direction
(I never can remember what they're called in English (')), a circumflex,
or an umlaut.  In addition, I may want to quote from other languages if
I write in French.
 
>   Oh, just BTW - using poor ASCII, which has no modifier bit, I am
>   using the convention that modifier is indictaed by h ( e.g. 
>  a word:  (modified_s)ot would appear as shot. (which is quite wastefull
>  as whole h is needed to perform function of one bit).

Surely this would introduce even more ambiguities.  In German, an h 
lengthens the vowels.  Is a vowel followed by an h an umlauted vowel?
An umauted vowel followed by an h? Or simply a vowel followed by an h?

I haven't seen anyone mention an ISO standard yet.  I was under the impression
that there was one.  Am I wrong?  I don't much care for the alternates
that I have seen used by terminal manufacturers in the US which is a
keyboard with many of the special symbols replaced with accented characters.
That may be nice for writting documents, but it must be intollerable for
coding in C or any other programming language which uses many nonalphabetic
symbols.