Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!think!husc6!linus!encore!bzs
From: bzs@encore.UUCP (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: AT&T Joining OSF
Message-ID: <3527@encore.UUCP>
Date: 27 Aug 88 16:40:09 GMT
References: <347@spies.UUCP> <670025@hpclscu.HP.COM> <24355@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <1991@stpstn.UUCP> <381@infmx.UUCP> <24566@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Followup-To: comp.unix.wizards
Organization: Encore Computer Corp, Marlboro, MA
Lines: 34
In-reply-to: madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU's message of 25 Aug 88 23:52:33 GMT


>How about the "n" different versions of EBCDIC?  It's an IBM standard
>and yet it's different on the three different types of IBM hardware I
>use (IBM System/32, System/23 Datamaster, and System/34, 36, and 38).
>ASCII is ASCII anywhere....
>
>jim frost

Correct, add to that list at least two different interpretations of
EBCDIC on the 370 architecture, note that on the "green card" from
IBM there are two columns referencing the following note:

	1. Two columns of EBCDIC graphics are shown. The first
	gives IBM standard U.S. bit pattern assignments. The
	second shows the T-11 and TN text printing chains (120
	graphics.)

What that means in practice (as we lived with painfully at BU) is that
if you transfer an ASCII file/mail whatever to an IBM you must know if
its intention was printing or otherwise.

Add to that the fact that IBM327x terminals don't have things like
curly braces (or maybe it's that they can display them but can't type
them in) and you really do have a pretty random environment, it
doesn't take too many choices/alternatives to just break down any
image that things are under control.

Don't speculate about it if you don't know what I'm referring to from
experience. EBCDIC is not inherently wrong (I mean, it's only an
encoding table), but IBM never really standardized it in any way
useful from machine to machine or device to device. That's how
"standards" die.

	-Barry Shein, ||Encore||