Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!APPLE.COM!alan
From: alan@APPLE.COM (Alan Mimms)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: 8 bits per char
Message-ID: <8902211720.AA14715@internal.apple.com>
Date: 21 Feb 89 17:20:53 GMT
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 16

This is an impassioned plea for people NOT to strip "that annoying parity
bit" when dealing with characters translated from keyboard events.  This
"parity" bit is really a valid part of the character!  Many character
sets (INCLUDING ISO Latin 1) REQUIRE all 256 possible values to be
representable.  For example, if a user wants a "O-umlaut" (or O-diaeresis),
he won't get one when he's talking to a client that strips the high order
bit -- he'll get a "V" instead.  xterm is guilty of this.  Hopefully,
this will change with the next release (x11r4?).

Please keep those bits -- they're NOT GARBAGE.  Some servers can now
generate all 256 ISO Latin 1 keysyms.

Alan Mimms			My opinions are generally
Communications Products Group	pretty worthless, but
Apple Computer			they *are* my own...
...it's so simple that only a child can do it!  -- Tom Lehrer, "New Math"