Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84 (Fortune 01.1b1); site graffiti.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!ut-sally!ut-ngp!shell!graffiti!peter From: peter@graffiti.UUCP (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: net.internat Subject: Re: What do we REALLY want? Message-ID: <422@graffiti.UUCP> Date: Sat, 9-Nov-85 23:43:22 EST Article-I.D.: graffiti.422 Posted: Sat Nov 9 23:43:22 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 11-Nov-85 07:38:04 EST References: <723@inset.UUCP> <960@erix.UUCP> <1569@hammer.UUCP> Organization: The Power Elite, Houston, TX Lines: 27 > > One needs an escape character from an 8-bit Acsii code. [...] Following > > the escape byte would be a byte identifying the function. Functions > > include: [...] Specify the alphabet to be used for subsequent characters > > (e.g., Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, etc.) Ascii is really a 7-bit code. Thus if the 8th bit is set then this byte and perhaps the next can be considered escaped info. I don't believe that locking shifts are a good idea, though, since it makes it hard to take an arbitrary lump of text and tell what it means. Since it's been established that there is no way of implementing a general foreign-language sort without table look-up and perhaps more involved heuristics (to handle dutch "ij", for example) anyway, why not do something like this... 0xxxxxxx Normal ASCII 10xxxxxx Foreign ROMAN characters 11xxxxxx xxxxxxxx Kanji or other extended character ...and just stuff all the foreign variants into the 64 extra characters this makes available for the purpose. I know I said something like this before, but nobody seems to have noticed and I am sufficiently egocentric to believe that there is something to it... -- Name: Peter da Silva Graphic: `-_-' UUCP: ...!shell!{graffiti,baylor}!peter IAEF: ...!kitty!baylor!peter