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From: sommar@enea.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Character representation
Message-ID: <2253@enea.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 5-Sep-87 18:23:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: enea.2253
Posted: Sat Sep  5 18:23:20 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 6-Sep-87 19:47:30 EDT
Reply-To: sommar@enea.UUCP(Erland Sommarskog)
Followup-To: comp.std.internat
Organization: ENEA DATA Svenska AB, Sweden
Lines: 43


It is now some weeke ago since I wrote an article where I asked
for a change of paradigm for character representation. It was
followed about discussion of sorting and what languages which
used what acccents.
  The last days some new ideas have been coming up, though I'd 
like to comment these. In a separate article I am presenting an own
proposal to a character standard.

Basically we have seen two approaches to the problem. Alan
Lovejoy's idea of a character palette and ISO 6937. The palette
first.
  The idea has its points, but I feel it is over-worked. Do you 
really need codes for all possible human sounds? Computers today
transmits written language, not spoken. But with speech synthesis
advancing, we may need this standard in some decades.
  Alan hasn't spoken of sorting and character comparison. Just
comparing the (arbitrarily) numeric codes doens't seem meaningful.
Have you thought of introduce language dependicy here?

So ISO 6937. Until Bruce Sherwood wrote his article I hadn't 
heard of this standard. Obviuosly this standard does a lot 
of what I requested. By introducing mute modifiers a lot more
letters can be handled.
  But apparently it was ahead of its times. Fridrik Skulason
writes: "6937 may be better than 8859 for some purposes 
(communication that is), but as a standard character set for 
terminals it is useless. The reason ... Simple. Most existing 
software packages assume that (1 char in text = 1 char on screen)."
  That is giving up, I'd say. Yes, ISO 6937 would require many
existing programmes being rewritten. It would also require
progress in hardware for handle the mute characters properly.
But can't do we this? If Fridrik is right we are doomed to live
the ASCII/8859 stone age approach forever.
  Now I think he is wrong. But of course you have work more
for a "progressive" standard to gain popularity than a defensive
one like 8859. What you need is some leading manufacturer to 
start using it, or an important customer to require it.
-- 

Erland Sommarskog       
ENEA Data, Stockholm    
sommar@enea.UUCP