Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!pacbell!ptsfa!ames!mailrus!umix!uunet!mcvax!hafro!krafla!marius
From: marius@rhi.hi.is (Marius Olafsson)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: 8-bit fonts
Message-ID: <143@krafla.rhi.hi.is>
Date: 7 Mar 88 11:36:06 GMT
References: <3aa84fac.b8ab@apollo.uucp>
Organization: University of Iceland
Lines: 19

From article <3aa84fac.b8ab@apollo.uucp>, by rees@apollo.uucp (Jim Rees):
> How widespread and how standard is Latin-1 for expression of international
> characters?  Someone from Europe want to comment?

We use ISO8859/1 (Latin1) for our native language domestic postings
(we need to use 20 extra letters from 8859). This 8-bit functionality
of the news software is best done simply by substituting an ISO8859 version
of the 'ctype' macros, and then the changes to well written reader programs 
are minimal (as long as they do not use the 8th bit for something). (I can
provide the patches to vnews/rn/vn (with modified ctype macros) in the 
unlikely event anyone is interested.)

It is my understanding that the RFC's dealing with the exchange of Usenet
messages specify that the text must be 7-bit ascii, so we make sure
that none of this leaves the country - Is this true?

--
Marius Olafsson			marius@rhi.hi.is
University of Iceland		{mcvax,enea}!hafro!rhi!marius