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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395329 is a reply to message #395327] |
Wed, 03 June 2020 20:10   |
Gerard Schildberger
Messages: 163
Registered: September 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 6:53:48 PM UTC-5, Mike Spencer wrote:
> Charlie Gibbs writes:
>
>> Granted. But it pains me when I wander through Staples or Best Buy and
>> see how few laptops don't have that French-Canadian layout (Macbooks
>> excepted). One salesman even said that the government doesn't allow
>> laptops sold in Canada to have the standard US layout.
>
> Just curious: How would I know I have French-Canadian layout keyboard?
>
> My ca. 5 y.o. Acer E17 (bought at Staples) has a typically annoying
> keyboard (compared to a desktop kb) but has a nice two-row-high return
> key.
>
> Doesn't matter a great deal as I'm not a touch typist. I wisely
> enrolled in typing class in high school when computers were still
> remote & mystical objects but I owned a nice Hermes portable
> typewriter.
" That was the same autumn that I less wisely implemented a
" backyard rocket experiment the failure of which put a permanent end to
" my touch typing even after several months in assorted splints and
" casts. Also the reason I like the fat return key.
"
Ya left out the best parts: did the rocket get off the ground, and
how high? ______________________________________ Gerard Schildberger
> But I don't see aything explicitly French on the Acer. How do I tell?
>
>
> --
> Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395330 is a reply to message #395326] |
Wed, 03 June 2020 20:47 |
Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
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On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 5:50:11 PM UTC-6, J. Clarke wrote:
> Maybe you should let Quebec leave then conquer it and let it operate
> as an occupied territory until it comes to its senses.
That would be too much trouble, and could involve possible bloodshed. As well,
conquering a foreign coutnry constitutes aggression.
So instead one first, while Quebec is still a part of Canada, deprives it of
representation, changing its status to that of a territory. Then, after it comes
to its senses, let it leave. That way, Quebec could be made to come to its
senses, but it would be an internal Canadian matter rather than a flagrant
violation of the United Nations Charter.
John Savard
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395331 is a reply to message #395327] |
Wed, 03 June 2020 20:48 |
Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
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On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 5:53:48 PM UTC-6, Mike Spencer wrote:
> Just curious: How would I know I have French-Canadian layout keyboard?
Like a United Kingdom keyboard, or, indeed, most international keyboards, there
would be an extra key between the key with the letter Z and the left-hand Shift
key.
John Savard
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395333 is a reply to message #395306] |
Wed, 03 June 2020 20:54 |
Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
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On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 12:09:56 PM UTC-6, Daphne Eftychia Arthur wrote:
> The biggest flaw in ASCII was that
> 'A' at the front of the acronym.
But that's fixed now. What we're using is ISO 8859-1, even if some people, out of
habit, incorrectly refer to it as "8-bit ASCII".
Even before the various flavors of ISO 8859, of which ISO 8859-1 is only one, came
to be, the 7-bit code could also be referred to either as ISO 7 or as
International Telegraph Alphabet #5.
John Savard
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| Re: What ASCII actually is [message #395334 is a reply to message #395333] |
Wed, 03 June 2020 22:11 |
John Levine
Messages: 1405
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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In article <8bdf158c-f2cd-49c4-b342-bd6c9f6f0b6a@googlegroups.com>,
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 12:09:56 PM UTC-6, Daphne Eftychia Arthur wrote:
>> The biggest flaw in ASCII was that
>> 'A' at the front of the acronym.
>
> But that's fixed now. What we're using is ISO 8859-1, even if some people, out of
> habit, incorrectly refer to it as "8-bit ASCII".
The IETF standard is still RFC 20 which is a copy of a very old
version of ANSI X3.4. The current version of ASCII is ANSI INCITS
4-1986 (R2017) which is what we use here in the U.S.
ISO 8859-1 is a superset of INCITS 4 with more characters in the 0x80
to 0xFF range.
--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395340 is a reply to message #395333] |
Wed, 03 June 2020 23:05 |
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Originally posted by: daphne
In article <8bdf158c-f2cd-49c4-b342-bd6c9f6f0b6a@googlegroups.com>,
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 12:09:56 PM UTC-6, Daphne Eftychia Arthur wrote:
>> The biggest flaw in ASCII was that
>> 'A' at the front of the acronym.
>
> But that's fixed now. What we're using is ISO 8859-1, even if some
> people, out of
> habit, incorrectly refer to it as "8-bit ASCII".
Maybe you are, but most of the time I'm using UTF-8 except when dealing
with tools that aren't 8-bit clean, in which case I use ASCII. That's
why I can put my name as Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθοθρος in my Twitter handle.
Does ISO 8859-1, ISO 8859-15, or the Windows/Mac near-equivalents
contain complete upper & lowercase Greek alphabets?
I did use 8859-1 (and at least one other ISO 8859 code page but I can't
recall which) for a few years before UTF-8 became ubiquitous, but oy! it
was such a pain figuring out how to get different tools to use the right
code page. Oh, and I used the upper 128 characters on the TRS-80 Models
I, III, & 4 sometimes -- I don't know whether that character set had a
formal name.
I do remember when I was working for the Army, on a visit to a
contractor I saw they were using the high-bit line-and-box drawing
characters in MS-DOS, and had to explain to them that the system wasn't
going to run on PC/XTs, it was going to run on a Xenix machine with a
bunch of dumb terminals attached (mostly Wyse-50 & Wyse-75). They were
rather confused. (They also didn't know about record-locking, because
the idea of a multiuser computer was foreign to them.)
FWIW, I've never encounted a version of ASCII that lacked lowercase
letters, making a few of your earlier statements a bit mysterious to me.
I've used uppercase-only _terminals_ (they handled receiving lowercase
letters by converting them to uppercase for display -- or printing, in
the case of the TeleType), but some of the ones that could only display
uppercase had ways to generate+send lowercase. Every ASCII chart I
looked at when I was learning about it, there was a section for
lowercase letters.
--
Daphne Eftychia Arthur daphne@panix.com
Grandis vetus factio delenda est.
Everything is better with live music.
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395341 is a reply to message #395340] |
Wed, 03 June 2020 23:26 |
Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
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On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 9:05:32 PM UTC-6, Daphne Eftychia Arthur wrote:
> FWIW, I've never encounted a version of ASCII that lacked lowercase
> letters, making a few of your earlier statements a bit mysterious to me.
> I've used uppercase-only _terminals_ (they handled receiving lowercase
> letters by converting them to uppercase for display -- or printing, in
> the case of the TeleType), but some of the ones that could only display
> uppercase had ways to generate+send lowercase. Every ASCII chart I
> looked at when I was learning about it, there was a section for
> lowercase letters.
It wasn't until 1968 that the version of ASCII with lower-case letters that
we're familiar with now was introduced.
In 1965, the first draft proposal for ASCII with lower-case letters was
advanced, but that was not in regular use, and it had several significant
differences with ASCII as we're familiar with it.
So from 1963 to 1968, ASCII was an upper-case only code, with the area from
X'60' to X'7B' undefined. The Escape (ESC) character was X'7E' instead of X'1B',
the Tab character was called Horizontal Tab, the caret (^) was an up-arrow, and
the underscore (_) was a back-arrow.
I actually have a chart illustrating the history of ASCII on my own web page, at
http://www.quadibloc.com/comp/cp02.htm
on a page about computer arithmetic.
John Savard
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395342 is a reply to message #395340] |
Wed, 03 June 2020 23:27 |
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Originally posted by: daphne
In article <rb9odr$fqi$1@reader1.panix.com>,
Daphne Eftychia Arthur <daphne@panix.com> wrote:
> FWIW, I've never encounted a version of ASCII that lacked lowercase
> letters, making a few of your earlier statements a bit mysterious to me.
Never mind; I found it. From 1963 to 1965 ASCII lacked lowercase.
Something I had not known. I guess I haven't run into many systems
built during those particular years.
--
Daphne Eftychia Arthur daphne@panix.com
Grandis vetus factio delenda est.
Everything is better with live music.
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395343 is a reply to message #395342] |
Wed, 03 June 2020 23:31 |
Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
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On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 9:27:10 PM UTC-6, Daphne Eftychia Arthur wrote:
> Never mind; I found it. From 1963 to 1965 ASCII lacked lowercase.
> Something I had not known. I guess I haven't run into many systems
> built during those particular years.
Actually, it lacked lower-case from 1963 to 1968. There was a draft proposal for
ASCII with lowercase in 1965, but it never saw actual use (as I note in my reply
to your earlier post).
I didn't start using computers until 1970 - but my first experience with a
computer was using BASIC in high school, on a PDP 8/e which was lent to it...
and there I used an ASR 33 Teletype, an upper-case only terminal. At University,
at first my contact with computers was through the IBM 29 card punch and the IBM
2741 terminal (built around a Selectric typewriter), but the mainframe (an IBM
360/67) had a PDP-11 front-end connected to it, and so I did have some
experience with ASCII terminals, some of which had lower-case.
John Savard
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395344 is a reply to message #395343] |
Wed, 03 June 2020 23:41 |
Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
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On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 9:31:33 PM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:
> I didn't start using computers until 1970 - but my first experience with a
> computer was using BASIC in high school, on a PDP 8/e which was lent to it...
> and there I used an ASR 33 Teletype, an upper-case only terminal. At University,
> at first my contact with computers was through the IBM 29 card punch and the IBM
> 2741 terminal (built around a Selectric typewriter), but the mainframe (an IBM
> 360/67) had a PDP-11 front-end connected to it, and so I did have some
> experience with ASCII terminals, some of which had lower-case.
If I'm going to go all autobiographical on everybody, I might as well mention
that, as a small child, I had a copy of the How and Why Wonder Book of Robots
and Electronic Brains, which had pictures of the Perceptron, the MOBOT, and an
IBM 1401 in it, and later on, I read the Life Science Library volume on
Mathematics, with its picture of an IBM 7030 (the computer of which the Los
Alamos STRETCH was the prototype) at the U. S. Weather Bureau. Both sources
probably also had pictures of an IBM 7090 in there somewhere, and I had also
seen pictures of the famous IBM 704 in various magazines and books, for example
because of its use in early investigations of getting a computer to play chess.
John Savard
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395349 is a reply to message #395325] |
Thu, 04 June 2020 01:23 |
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Originally posted by: Bob Eager
On Wed, 03 Jun 2020 16:37:37 -0700, robin.vowels wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 11:08:41 PM UTC+10, Bob Eager wrote:
>> On Wed, 03 Jun 2020 10:40:54 +0100, Andy Walker wrote:
>>
>>> On 03/06/2020 03:46, r......@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> [ and ] are used by ALGOL.
>>>
>>> Yes, but at least [for the past 61 years anyway] it is not
>>> necessary to use "[...]". You can use "(...)" anywhere that "[...]"
>>> is expected [and also in place of "begin ... end", "case ... esac"
>>> and "if ... fi"]. Other languages may not be so "lucky". OTOH,
>>> as seen here, I like to use "[...]" for parenthetic remarks; easier
>>> to reach and type on my keyboard.
>>
>> But that is specifically ALGOL 68 - a very very different language.
>
> [ and ] have been used for ALGOL 60, and probably from Algol 58.
Oh, I know. But not the rest of it.
--
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395350 is a reply to message #395331] |
Thu, 04 June 2020 02:11 |
Mike Spencer
Messages: 997
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
> On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 5:53:48 PM UTC-6, Mike Spencer wrote:
>
>> Just curious: How would I know I have French-Canadian layout keyboard?
>
> Like a United Kingdom keyboard, or, indeed, most international
> keyboards, there would be an extra key between the key with the
> letter Z and the left-hand Shift key.
Ah-ha! It has that. The Acer kb has numerous, presumably
alternative, chars marked in green on some of the keys. I have no
idea how to access them with my vanilla Linux config (not that I've
had any occasion to use them.) Now that I'm looking more closely,
there are a couple of clues, e.g. Caps Lock marked Verr. Maj. in
green.
Gerard Schildberger wrote: <gerard46@rrt.net>
> Mike Spencer wrote:
>
>> That was the same autumn that I less wisely implemented a backyard
>> rocket experiment the failure of which put a permanent end to my
>> touch typing even after several months in assorted splints and
>> casts. Also the reason I like the fat return key.
>
>
> Ya left out the best parts: did the rocket get off the ground, and
> how high?
Mark I disappeared into the trees 100 yards away. Mark II, with
"improved" fuel and metal shell, vanished on the launching pad,
portions later removed from my hand and arm and from a nearby 16"
trailer tire. Teen-age Mad Scientists didn't have computers in them
days so we hadda content ourselves with huge capacitors, combustible
chemicals and such.
--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395353 is a reply to message #395350] |
Thu, 04 June 2020 04:18 |
Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 12:12:11 AM UTC-6, Mike Spencer wrote:
> Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
>> On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 5:53:48 PM UTC-6, Mike Spencer wrote:
>>> Just curious: How would I know I have French-Canadian layout keyboard?
>> Like a United Kingdom keyboard, or, indeed, most international
>> keyboards, there would be an extra key between the key with the
>> letter Z and the left-hand Shift key.
> Ah-ha! It has that. The Acer kb has numerous, presumably
> alternative, chars marked in green on some of the keys. I have no
> idea how to access them with my vanilla Linux config (not that I've
> had any occasion to use them.) Now that I'm looking more closely,
> there are a couple of clues, e.g. Caps Lock marked Verr. Maj. in
> green.
Had your computer been running Microsoft Windows, and had it been set to use the
French-Canadian keyboard layout, the right-hand Alt key would now be the AltGr
key, and that would be used to access the alternate characters.
John Savard
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395355 is a reply to message #395324] |
Thu, 04 June 2020 06:31 |
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Originally posted by: Andy Walker
On 04/06/2020 00:35, robin.vowels@gmail.com wrote:
[Necessity for "[...]":]
> ALGOL language requires them.
> You cannot use ( ) instead.
$ a68g -p '( () INT a = (1,2,3);
a(2) | ~, "Yes you can; see RR 9.4." + whole(a(1),0) +
"d, ""style i sub symbol""", ~ )'
Yes you can; see RR 9.4.1d, "style i sub symbol"
--
Andy Walker,
Nottingham.
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395358 is a reply to message #395355] |
Thu, 04 June 2020 10:05 |
Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
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On Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 4:31:30 AM UTC-6, Andy Walker wrote:
> On 04/06/2020 00:35, robin.vowels@gmail.com wrote:
> [Necessity for "[...]":]
>> ALGOL language requires them.
>> You cannot use ( ) instead.
>
> $ a68g -p '( () INT a = (1,2,3);
> a(2) | ~, "Yes you can; see RR 9.4." + whole(a(1),0) +
> "d, ""style i sub symbol""", ~ )'
> Yes you can; see RR 9.4.1d, "style i sub symbol"
For one thing, the reference may have been to the language ALGOL 60 and not
Algol 68.
For another, implementations of Algol 60 varied widely in the character set they
used. Thus, in many implementations, keywords had to be in single quotes, like
'BEGIN' but in others this was not necessary. The Algol publication language
used a *lot* of special characters not found on most computers.
The card punches for an IBM computer didn't even _have_ square brackets on them,
so no doubt their implementations found a way to do without square brackets.
Since an ASR 33 did have square brackets, though, other computers may well have
made those characters required for their implementations of Algol 60.
John Savard
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395359 is a reply to message #395268] |
Thu, 04 June 2020 10:06 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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<robin.vowels@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, June 2, 2020 at 12:25:12 PM UTC+10, Quadibloc wrote:
>> I know it's too late to change now.
>>
>> The layout of the Model M keyboard finally got things right, with the two shift
>> keys in their proper places, the back space key nicely reachable, and the Enter
>> key reachable as well.
>>
>> However, I still long for the double-height Enter (or carriage return) key of long
>> ago...
>>
>> and on the page
>>
>> http://www.quadibloc.com/comp/kyb0603.htm
>>
>> if you scroll right to the bottom,
>>
>> you will see what I think that ASCII should have been in order to avoid the need
>> for ASCII with lowercase to demand a keyboard with more keys on it than a normal
>> typewriter had.
>
> What? ASCII with lower case does not require more keys than
> a "normal" typewriter.
>
> (And what is a "normal" typewriter anyway?
> Does it mean one that uses small L for the digit 1,
> etc.
> Lower case ASCII requires only the use of a shift key,
> just like an ordinary typewriter.
>
>> And yet, I allow _more_ special characters, not _less_, than we have in regular
>> ASCII, by getting rid of all those control characters no one ever uses!
>
> ASCII NULL, CR, LF, FF etc are commonly used.
But not usually typed.
--
Pete
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395360 is a reply to message #395292] |
Thu, 04 June 2020 10:06 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Andy Walker <anw@cuboid.co.uk> wrote:
> On 03/06/2020 14:08, Bob Eager wrote:
>> But that is specifically ALGOL 68 - a very very different language.
>
> ??? Different from Algol 60, certainly; different from Algol?
> Do you feel the need to say of modern C that it is very very different
> from C, meaning that modern C is not the same as K&R C? Or that Fortran
> is very very different from Fortran when referring to modern features?
>
Certainly FORTRAN seems to be a different language, from my perspective of
not knowing very much about it. OTOH perhaps the distinction should be
whether the current compiler can still compile old programs unchanged.
--
Pete
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395361 is a reply to message #395313] |
Thu, 04 June 2020 10:06 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2020-06-03, Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 11:23:55 AM UTC-6, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> I just thank my lucky stars that the scourge of the original IBM PC keyboard
>>> layout - and its misbegotten offspring - has finally been eradicated.
>>> (Unless you're here in Canada trying to find a keyboard that doesn't
>>> have that horrid French-Canadian layout...)
>>
>> I am in Canada, and I know a lot of laptops only came in the French Canadian
>> layout, but I've had no trouble finding 101-key keyboards for my desktop
>> computers.
>
> Granted. But it pains me when I wander through Staples or Best Buy and
> see how few laptops don't have that French-Canadian layout (Macbooks
> excepted). One salesman even said that the government doesn't allow
> laptops sold in Canada to have the standard US layout. Although this
> brings to mind that old joke about computer salesmen [1], it isn't
> entirely unbelievable, given our federal government's eagerness to
> bend over backwards to appease Quebec in any way, shape, or form.
>
> When I need a laptop I buy a refurbished Thinkpad from a laptop shop.
> They have a good layout and a professional-grade feel that you're not
> likely to find anywhere else.
>
>> But then, I live in Alberta, not Quebec or even Ontario.
>
> I'm in B.C. myself.
>
> [1] Q: What's the difference between a used car salesman
> and a computer salesman?
> A: The used car salesman knows when he's lying.
>
Can you just order a keyboard from the US, or is that not allowed either?
(Wow, if so!) I replaced a cheap-o Dell keyboard with an IBM-101,
clicky-key version.
--
Pete
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395362 is a reply to message #395314] |
Thu, 04 June 2020 10:06 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 2:31:34 PM UTC-6, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>> One salesman even said that the government doesn't allow
>> laptops sold in Canada to have the standard US layout.
>
> I can tell you that isn't true. But some companies are too lazy to deal with the
> extra SKU.
Oh, *laptop* ‘nother problem altogether. People do use USB keyboards on
laptops, but that seems self-defeating. So, could you order a laptop from
Amazon or somewhere?
--
Pete
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395363 is a reply to message #395323] |
Thu, 04 June 2020 10:06 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Andy Walker <anw@cuboid.co.uk> wrote:
> On 03/06/2020 19:38, Bob Eager wrote:
> [I wrote:]
>>> Yes, but when someone says "Algol", do you automatically think
>>> of A60 or A68, and if the former, then why?
>> Because it was used far more, and implemented on more systems, than ALGOL
>> 60 ever was. In my experience, anyway.
>
> Ah. Well, my experience corresponds to what you wrote rather than
> what you intended to write! A60 was in substantial use over roughly a
> decade, as was A68; but A68's decade was later, when there were far more
> computers around, and when there were far more undergraduate CS courses.
> There were [beyond reasonable doubt] more independent A60 implementations,
> but many of those were for computers produced in penny packets rather than
> the mass production of later years.
>
In my (limited) experience, I saw ALGOL 60 a few times, and Algol 68 never.
I think it was more widely used in Rightpondia?
--
Pete
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395364 is a reply to message #395326] |
Thu, 04 June 2020 10:06 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3 Jun 2020 20:30:40 GMT, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid>
> wrote:
>
>> On 2020-06-03, Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 11:23:55 AM UTC-6, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>>
>>>> I just thank my lucky stars that the scourge of the original IBM PC keyboard
>>>> layout - and its misbegotten offspring - has finally been eradicated.
>>>> (Unless you're here in Canada trying to find a keyboard that doesn't
>>>> have that horrid French-Canadian layout...)
>>>
>>> I am in Canada, and I know a lot of laptops only came in the French Canadian
>>> layout, but I've had no trouble finding 101-key keyboards for my desktop
>>> computers.
>>
>> Granted. But it pains me when I wander through Staples or Best Buy and
>> see how few laptops don't have that French-Canadian layout (Macbooks
>> excepted). One salesman even said that the government doesn't allow
>> laptops sold in Canada to have the standard US layout. Although this
>> brings to mind that old joke about computer salesmen [1], it isn't
>> entirely unbelievable, given our federal government's eagerness to
>> bend over backwards to appease Quebec in any way, shape, or form.
>>
>> When I need a laptop I buy a refurbished Thinkpad from a laptop shop.
>> They have a good layout and a professional-grade feel that you're not
>> likely to find anywhere else.
>>
>>> But then, I live in Alberta, not Quebec or even Ontario.
>>
>> I'm in B.C. myself.
>>
>> [1] Q: What's the difference between a used car salesman
>> and a computer salesman?
>> A: The used car salesman knows when he's lying.
>
> Maybe you should let Quebec leave then conquer it and let it operate
> as an occupied territory until it comes to its senses.
>
>
PLEASE! We have enough problems in the US, let’s not stir up trouble in the
Frozen North.
--
Pete
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395365 is a reply to message #395341] |
Thu, 04 June 2020 10:06 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 9:05:32 PM UTC-6, Daphne Eftychia Arthur wrote:
>
>> FWIW, I've never encounted a version of ASCII that lacked lowercase
>> letters, making a few of your earlier statements a bit mysterious to me.
>> I've used uppercase-only _terminals_ (they handled receiving lowercase
>> letters by converting them to uppercase for display -- or printing, in
>> the case of the TeleType), but some of the ones that could only display
>> uppercase had ways to generate+send lowercase. Every ASCII chart I
>> looked at when I was learning about it, there was a section for
>> lowercase letters.
>
> It wasn't until 1968 that the version of ASCII with lower-case letters that
> we're familiar with now was introduced.
>
> In 1965, the first draft proposal for ASCII with lower-case letters was
> advanced, but that was not in regular use, and it had several significant
> differences with ASCII as we're familiar with it.
>
> So from 1963 to 1968, ASCII was an upper-case only code, with the area from
> X'60' to X'7B' undefined. The Escape (ESC) character was X'7E' instead of X'1B',
> the Tab character was called Horizontal Tab
I thought it still was Horizontal Tab.
> the caret (^) was an up-arrow, and
> the underscore (_) was a back-arrow.
>
> I actually have a chart illustrating the history of ASCII on my own web page, at
>
> http://www.quadibloc.com/comp/cp02.htm
>
> on a page about computer arithmetic.
>
> John Savard
>
--
Pete
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395370 is a reply to message #395359] |
Thu, 04 June 2020 11:23 |
scott
Messages: 4237
Registered: February 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
> <robin.vowels@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tuesday, June 2, 2020 at 12:25:12 PM UTC+10, Quadibloc wrote:
>>> I know it's too late to change now.
>>>
>>> The layout of the Model M keyboard finally got things right, with the two shift
>>> keys in their proper places, the back space key nicely reachable, and the Enter
>>> key reachable as well.
>>>
>>> However, I still long for the double-height Enter (or carriage return) key of long
>>> ago...
>>>
>>> and on the page
>>>
>>> http://www.quadibloc.com/comp/kyb0603.htm
>>>
>>> if you scroll right to the bottom,
>>>
>>> you will see what I think that ASCII should have been in order to avoid the need
>>> for ASCII with lowercase to demand a keyboard with more keys on it than a normal
>>> typewriter had.
>>
>> What? ASCII with lower case does not require more keys than
>> a "normal" typewriter.
>>
>> (And what is a "normal" typewriter anyway?
>> Does it mean one that uses small L for the digit 1,
>> etc.
>> Lower case ASCII requires only the use of a shift key,
>> just like an ordinary typewriter.
>>
>>> And yet, I allow _more_ special characters, not _less_, than we have in regular
>>> ASCII, by getting rid of all those control characters no one ever uses!
>>
>> ASCII NULL, CR, LF, FF etc are commonly used.
>
> But not usually typed.
Unless you are a programmer. (e.g. \n, \r, \f \0 in C-like languages).
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395371 is a reply to message #395370] |
Thu, 04 June 2020 12:38 |
Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 9:23:04 AM UTC-6, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
>> <robin.vowels@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> ASCII NULL, CR, LF, FF etc are commonly used.
>> But not usually typed.
> Unless you are a programmer. (e.g. \n, \r, \f \0 in C-like languages).
It's true that on an IBM PC, as opposed to when one is using a terminal to
communicate with a mainframe, pressing the backspace key is not the same as
sending a back space character, pressing the Tab key may not be the same as
sending a tab character (although if one is using Unix, at least, it will put a
tab character in a text file, because there they're used as white space), and
pressing Enter is not the same as sending a carriage return character (or line
feed, for Unix)...
but some control characters are sent by the user. I did include the most common
in the few control character positions left in my suggested revision to ASCII.
John Savard
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395375 is a reply to message #395362] |
Thu, 04 June 2020 12:59 |
Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On 2020-06-04, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 2:31:34 PM UTC-6, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> One salesman even said that the government doesn't allow
>>> laptops sold in Canada to have the standard US layout.
>>
>> I can tell you that isn't true. But some companies are too lazy to
>> deal with the extra SKU.
>
> Oh, *laptop* ‘nother problem altogether. People do use USB keyboards on
> laptops, but that seems self-defeating. So, could you order a laptop from
> Amazon or somewhere?
When I bought a laptop for my wife I was able to order one in
from a local supplier. The layout was what I was looking for,
but otherwise the keyboard was a piece of crap. It's hard to
make a good choice when you can't try before you buy.
--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395406 is a reply to message #395353] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 02:50 |
Mike Spencer
Messages: 997
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
> On Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 12:12:11 AM UTC-6, Mike Spencer wrote:
>
>> Ah-ha! It has that. The Acer kb has numerous, presumably
>> alternative, chars marked in green on some of the keys. I have no
>> idea how to access them with my vanilla Linux config (not that I've
>> had any occasion to use them.) Now that I'm looking more closely,
>> there are a couple of clues, e.g. Caps Lock marked Verr. Maj. in
>> green.
>
> Had your computer been running Microsoft Windows, and had it been
> set to use the French-Canadian keyboard layout, the right-hand Alt
> key would now be the AltGr key, and that would be used to access the
> alternate characters.
I had surmised as much but Windoes went away on the first boot and
I've jiggered the kb a whole bunch with .Xmodmap.
--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395407 is a reply to message #395361] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 03:44 |
Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 8:06:35 AM UTC-6, Peter Flass wrote:
> Can you just order a keyboard from the US, or is that not allowed either?
> (Wow, if so!)
If you live in Quebec, you may not be able to order a keyboard, or other product,
from the U.S. if the manufacturer doesn't include labelling and instructions in
French at least equally with English. Elsewhere in Canada, there is no problem;
Canadians are free to be customers of Unicomp, for example.
John Savard
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395416 is a reply to message #395407] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 10:53 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> On Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 8:06:35 AM UTC-6, Peter Flass wrote:
>
>> Can you just order a keyboard from the US, or is that not allowed either?
>> (Wow, if so!)
>
> If you live in Quebec, you may not be able to order a keyboard, or other product,
> from the U.S. if the manufacturer doesn't include labelling and instructions in
> French at least equally with English. Elsewhere in Canada, there is no problem;
> Canadians are free to be customers of Unicomp, for example.
>
Seems like massive overreach to tell people what they can and can’t order (
except for health and safety, of course)
--
Pete
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395417 is a reply to message #395416] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 11:04 |
Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 8:53:42 AM UTC-6, Peter Flass wrote:
> Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>> On Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 8:06:35 AM UTC-6, Peter Flass wrote:
>>> Can you just order a keyboard from the US, or is that not allowed either?
>>> (Wow, if so!)
>> If you live in Quebec, you may not be able to order a keyboard, or other product,
>> from the U.S. if the manufacturer doesn't include labelling and instructions in
>> French at least equally with English. Elsewhere in Canada, there is no problem;
>> Canadians are free to be customers of Unicomp, for example.
> Seems like massive overreach to tell people what they can and can’t order (
> except for health and safety, of course)
This news item, from a British newspaper
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/justin-trudeau -canada-french-language-pandemic
should make it clear how bad the situation is.
John Savard
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395418 is a reply to message #395416] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 12:05 |
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Originally posted by: JimP
On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 07:53:40 -0700, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
wrote:
> Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>> On Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 8:06:35 AM UTC-6, Peter Flass wrote:
>>
>>> Can you just order a keyboard from the US, or is that not allowed either?
>>> (Wow, if so!)
>>
>> If you live in Quebec, you may not be able to order a keyboard, or other product,
>> from the U.S. if the manufacturer doesn't include labelling and instructions in
>> French at least equally with English. Elsewhere in Canada, there is no problem;
>> Canadians are free to be customers of Unicomp, for example.
>>
>
> Seems like massive overreach to tell people what they can and cant order (
> except for health and safety, of course)
I would call it asinine and childishly pathetic.
--
Jim
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395420 is a reply to message #395418] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 12:27 |
Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 10:05:43 AM UTC-6, JimP wrote:
> On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 07:53:40 -0700, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>> Seems like massive overreach to tell people what they can and can’t order (
>> except for health and safety, of course)
> I would call it asinine and childishly pathetic.
Quebec language legislation goes back to Bill 22, introduced under the Bourassa
government.
Bill 22 had three main provisions.
One was legitimate enough: companies with over 50 employees would be required to
operate in the French language. This was a response to the fact that in Quebec,
their home province, unlingual French speakers faced limited employment
opportunities, with companies often preferring to operate in English and hire
from the English-speaking minority in Quebec.
However, even that was discriminatory, since the English-speaking minority was a
large enough community that businesses serving it would not necessarily be
small.
Another provision was that only children whose parents attended English-language
schools in Quebec could send their children to English-language schools.
Eventually, this was partly stricken down by the courts as it affected people
coming from other parts of Canada due to mobility rights (equivalent to the 14th
Amendment), but it still affects immigrants.
Also, stores had to have signs - not just outdoor signs, but also the ones in
the aisles for finding things - in which the French language predominated.
Outdoor signs could only be in French, but the courts overturned that in 1988.
This kind of legislation may well be incomprehensible to Americans, as it would
be un-Constitutional in several respects. Had there been a State in which the
majority of people spoke Spanish, and they were concerned that the Spanish
language was eroding because of the economic dominance of English, then the
United States might see similar issues, but no analogous situation exists.
John Savard
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395421 is a reply to message #395420] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 12:45 |
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Originally posted by: Dallas
On 6/5/2020 11:27 AM, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 10:05:43 AM UTC-6, JimP wrote:
>> On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 07:53:40 -0700, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
>> wrote:
>
>>> Seems like massive overreach to tell people what they can and can’t order (
>>> except for health and safety, of course)
>
>> I would call it asinine and childishly pathetic.
>
> Quebec language legislation goes back to Bill 22, introduced under the Bourassa
> government.
>
> Bill 22 had three main provisions.
>
> One was legitimate enough: companies with over 50 employees would be required to
> operate in the French language. This was a response to the fact that in Quebec,
> their home province, unlingual French speakers faced limited employment
> opportunities, with companies often preferring to operate in English and hire
> from the English-speaking minority in Quebec.
>
> However, even that was discriminatory, since the English-speaking minority was a
> large enough community that businesses serving it would not necessarily be
> small.
>
> Another provision was that only children whose parents attended English-language
> schools in Quebec could send their children to English-language schools.
> Eventually, this was partly stricken down by the courts as it affected people
> coming from other parts of Canada due to mobility rights (equivalent to the 14th
> Amendment), but it still affects immigrants.
>
> Also, stores had to have signs - not just outdoor signs, but also the ones in
> the aisles for finding things - in which the French language predominated.
> Outdoor signs could only be in French, but the courts overturned that in 1988.
>
> This kind of legislation may well be incomprehensible to Americans, as it would
> be un-Constitutional in several respects. Had there been a State in which the
> majority of people spoke Spanish, and they were concerned that the Spanish
> language was eroding because of the economic dominance of English, then the
> United States might see similar issues, but no analogous situation exists.
>
> John Savard
>
What is Canada's stance regarding programming languages that use English-only words like "if" and
"else" ?
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395422 is a reply to message #395421] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 12:55 |
Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 10:45:17 AM UTC-6, Dallas wrote:
> What is Canada's stance regarding programming languages that use English-only words like "if" and
> "else" ?
So far, no real attempt has been made, even in Quebec, to offer French-language
versions of computer programming languages. I suppose linguistic nationalism had
to stop somewhere.
John Savard
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395423 is a reply to message #395417] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 13:03 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 8:53:42 AM UTC-6, Peter Flass wrote:
>> Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>>> On Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 8:06:35 AM UTC-6, Peter Flass wrote:
>
>>>> Can you just order a keyboard from the US, or is that not allowed either?
>>>> (Wow, if so!)
>
>>> If you live in Quebec, you may not be able to order a keyboard, or other product,
>>> from the U.S. if the manufacturer doesn't include labelling and instructions in
>>> French at least equally with English. Elsewhere in Canada, there is no problem;
>>> Canadians are free to be customers of Unicomp, for example.
>
>> Seems like massive overreach to tell people what they can and can’t order (
>> except for health and safety, of course)
>
> This news item, from a British newspaper
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/justin-trudeau -canada-french-language-pandemic
>
> should make it clear how bad the situation is.
>
You wouldn’t be French (-Canadian) if you weren’t outraged about something.
On the other hand, I’d rather have that than what we have in the US now.
--
Pete
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395424 is a reply to message #395420] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 13:03 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 10:05:43 AM UTC-6, JimP wrote:
>> On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 07:53:40 -0700, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
>> wrote:
>
>>> Seems like massive overreach to tell people what they can and can’t order (
>>> except for health and safety, of course)
>
>> I would call it asinine and childishly pathetic.
>
> Quebec language legislation goes back to Bill 22, introduced under the Bourassa
> government.
>
> Bill 22 had three main provisions.
>
> One was legitimate enough: companies with over 50 employees would be required to
> operate in the French language. This was a response to the fact that in Quebec,
> their home province, unlingual French speakers faced limited employment
> opportunities, with companies often preferring to operate in English and hire
> from the English-speaking minority in Quebec.
>
> However, even that was discriminatory, since the English-speaking minority was a
> large enough community that businesses serving it would not necessarily be
> small.
>
> Another provision was that only children whose parents attended English-language
> schools in Quebec could send their children to English-language schools.
> Eventually, this was partly stricken down by the courts as it affected people
> coming from other parts of Canada due to mobility rights (equivalent to the 14th
> Amendment), but it still affects immigrants.
>
> Also, stores had to have signs - not just outdoor signs, but also the ones in
> the aisles for finding things - in which the French language predominated.
I could see equal.
> Outdoor signs could only be in French, but the courts overturned that in 1988.
>
> This kind of legislation may well be incomprehensible to Americans, as it would
> be un-Constitutional in several respects. Had there been a State in which the
> majority of people spoke Spanish, and they were concerned that the Spanish
> language was eroding because of the economic dominance of English, then the
> United States might see similar issues, but no analogous situation exists.
>
We’re more concerned with the opposite, although businesses here usually do
business in both languages. You need to do what your customers want.
--
Pete
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395425 is a reply to message #395421] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 13:03 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
|
Senior Member |
|
|
Dallas <dallas@texas.usa> wrote:
> On 6/5/2020 11:27 AM, Quadibloc wrote:
>> On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 10:05:43 AM UTC-6, JimP wrote:
>>> On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 07:53:40 -0700, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
>>> wrote:
>>
>>>> Seems like massive overreach to tell people what they can and can’t order (
>>>> except for health and safety, of course)
>>
>>> I would call it asinine and childishly pathetic.
>>
>> Quebec language legislation goes back to Bill 22, introduced under the Bourassa
>> government.
>>
>> Bill 22 had three main provisions.
>>
>> One was legitimate enough: companies with over 50 employees would be required to
>> operate in the French language. This was a response to the fact that in Quebec,
>> their home province, unlingual French speakers faced limited employment
>> opportunities, with companies often preferring to operate in English and hire
>> from the English-speaking minority in Quebec.
>>
>> However, even that was discriminatory, since the English-speaking minority was a
>> large enough community that businesses serving it would not necessarily be
>> small.
>>
>> Another provision was that only children whose parents attended English-language
>> schools in Quebec could send their children to English-language schools.
>> Eventually, this was partly stricken down by the courts as it affected people
>> coming from other parts of Canada due to mobility rights (equivalent to the 14th
>> Amendment), but it still affects immigrants.
>>
>> Also, stores had to have signs - not just outdoor signs, but also the ones in
>> the aisles for finding things - in which the French language predominated.
>> Outdoor signs could only be in French, but the courts overturned that in 1988.
>>
>> This kind of legislation may well be incomprehensible to Americans, as it would
>> be un-Constitutional in several respects. Had there been a State in which the
>> majority of people spoke Spanish, and they were concerned that the Spanish
>> language was eroding because of the economic dominance of English, then the
>> United States might see similar issues, but no analogous situation exists.
>>
>> John Savard
>>
>
> What is Canada's stance regarding programming languages that use
> English-only words like "if" and
> "else" ?
>
Someone write an ALGOL compiler that used French keywords and French error
messages.
--
Pete
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395427 is a reply to message #395422] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 13:16 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
|
Senior Member |
|
|
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 10:45:17 AM UTC-6, Dallas wrote:
>
>> What is Canada's stance regarding programming languages that use
>> English-only words like "if" and
>> "else" ?
>
> So far, no real attempt has been made, even in Quebec, to offer French-language
> versions of computer programming languages. I suppose linguistic nationalism had
> to stop somewhere.
>
> John Savard
>
Actually, should be fairly simple to do. Just plug in different keyword and
error message tables.
--
Pete
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395428 is a reply to message #395422] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 13:23 |
Ahem A Rivet's Shot
Messages: 4843
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 09:55:08 -0700 (PDT)
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 10:45:17 AM UTC-6, Dallas wrote:
>
>> What is Canada's stance regarding programming languages that use
>> English-only words like "if" and "else" ?
>
> So far, no real attempt has been made, even in Quebec, to offer
> French-language versions of computer programming languages. I suppose
> linguistic nationalism had to stop somewhere.
AFAIK the only French based programming language is LSE which I
think has been abandoned (by the French!). It only just got to structured
and never made it to OO.
--
Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays
C:\>WIN | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see
You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
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