Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!gorodish!guy
From: guy@gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: command line options (UNIX-specific)
Message-ID: <50649@sun.uucp>
Date: 23 Apr 88 19:36:47 GMT
References: <1036@mcgill-vision.UUCP# <14020029@hpisod2.HP.COM# <4892@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Lines: 17

> Well, how about Kanji Unix?  Kanji is kind of cute, double letter codes and
> an escape sequence, would be nice if you could just let that cuddly little
> JIS (sp?) kanji escape sequence sit up front so that the rest could be seen
> as a Kanji string.  This may not be important to you, but why garbage up
> the operating system with coddling for the user?  That is what *user*
> interfaces are for.

I agree, but Kanji may not be the right example here; many UNIX vendors have
adopted or will adopt the UJIS (or however it's spelled) code, which is the
AT&T EUC code for Kanji.  All Kanji characters consist of two bytes, both of
which have the 8th bit set (the code is the 2-byte JIS6226 code, with the 8th
bit turned on for both of the bytes).

Now *kana* *is* a proper example here; in UJIS, the kana codes are single-byte
codes in G2, consisting of the SS2 control character (0x83) followed by a
single byte with its 8th bit on (the code is the 1-byte JIS6220 code, with the
8th bit turned on).