Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!ucbarpa!fair From: fair@ucbarpa.BERKELEY.EDU (Erik E. &) Newsgroups: net.unix Subject: Re: International Unix Message-ID: <10811@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: Sat, 26-Oct-85 17:42:30 EST Article-I.D.: ucbvax.10811 Posted: Sat Oct 26 17:42:30 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 28-Oct-85 03:16:57 EST References: <2400@brl-tgr.ARPA> Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: University of California at Berkeley Lines: 35 The point about the kernel not having much ASCII dependent code is well taken, however, I was thinking (and expounding upon) the whole of UNIX, which most specifically includes the entire lot of ASCII ridden utility programs. For an inaccurate survey (it will grossly underestimate the number of programs that will have to be changed), do something like this: cd /usr/src egrep -l 'include.*ctype.h' *[ch] */*[ch] | wc -l This will give you the number of files that include `ctype.h' which is explicitly ASCII dependent. Someone else said that different European languages (we're ignoring the orient for the moment) use the same glyph or letter in different order, or with completely different meaning, and therefore an international character set can't be done. If that's the case, then each country will end up writing its own version of UNIX based on the national character set (like the French have done, and the Japanese are doing now). The real goal we're shooting for is the international exchange of information. There's nothing stopping the Europeans or the Japanese from building their own computers on incompatible character sets. And they do so. However, it is hard, slow and tedious to translate data from a Japanese computer in (say) kanji, to English/ASCII. I think that we're attacking the wrong problem, however. Instead of attempting the technological solution by teaching computers some large `n' number of languages, we should attack the basal cultural problem by developing and widely teaching a common intermediate language. Esperanto, anyone? Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucbarpa.BERKELEY.EDU