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From: devine@vianet.UUCP (Bob Devine)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: What is a byte
Message-ID: <217@vianet.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 14-Aug-87 21:27:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: vianet.217
Posted: Fri Aug 14 21:27:29 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Aug-87 06:52:12 EDT
References: <15350@mordor.s1.gov>
Organization: Western Digital, Boulder Tech Ctr
Lines: 14
Xref: mnetor comp.lang.c:3655 comp.std.internat:99

>   The so called 'Daisy Sort' [...]    points a way to an
>   objective measure of suitability of different coding  methods for different
>   uses - and that several categories  of use [text, programming code]
>   are frequent enough and universal enough  to merit their own 
>   character families or subfonts, binary representations
>   and an international standard.

  Unfortunately, it would be very difficult to write any general
text manipulating programs.  With ASCII encoding it is very easy
to yank sections out of random files and assemble a consistent
file.  The problems of dealing with a mixed-mode file will quickly
eliminate advantages gained in the single-mode case.  Likewise
consider how a program like 'grep' would operate; it would need
a switch to handle different reprensentations of the same string.