Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: 8 Bit character sets (was Re: Where is isascii(c)?) Message-ID: <1990Feb3.051332.5036@utzoo.uucp> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: <589@loft386.UUCP> <592@loft386.UUCP> <23330@princeton.Princeton.EDU> <2289@psueea.UUCP> <596@loft386.UUCP> <2300@psueea.UUCP> <5257@star.cs.vu.nl> <1990Feb1.172916.16504@utzoo.uucp> <4527@orion.cf.uci.edu> Date: Sat, 3 Feb 90 05:13:32 GMT In article <4527@orion.cf.uci.edu> David Lawyer writes: >>...tempted to say that the values should follow ISO Latin 1... > >What about ISO Latin/Cyrillic 5? I found the Minix book by AST is in a >Russian book catalog and will be printed in Russian. Will not they >need Russian (Cyrillic) characters? The problem with this standard is >that the high control characters (0x80-0x99) are apparently not used >for printable characters. These 32 characters could possibly be >assigned to many of the non-ascii West European letters... ISO Latin 1 fills the 96 high non-control characters with, mostly, non-ASCII Western European letters, and *still* doesn't quite cover all the Western European languages. Trying to make a token gesture in that direction with 32 characters is not worthwhile, especially when it results in a non-standard character set. Is there some reason why the Russians deserve special treatment? Why not, say, the Greeks? (As I recall, they have an ISO Latin/xxx N set all to themselves.) How about Hebrew? Hindi? Arabic? You simply can't get all the useful character sets into 8 bits even if you ignore the Oriental languages. Latin 1 gives about the widest coverage you can hope for in an 8-bit set; it covers most major languages of five continents (since said languages mostly are Western European languages or at least use Western European alphabets). -- 1972: Saturn V #15 flight-ready| Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology 1990: birds nesting in engines | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu