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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!husc6!cmcl2!phri!dasys1!tneff
From: tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d,comp.emacs
Subject: Re: US PC programmers still live in a 7-bit world!
Summary: the insular perspective
Message-ID: <5344@dasys1.UUCP>
Date: 5 Jul 88 18:09:26 GMT
References: <1988Jun22.223158.1366@LTH.Se>
Reply-To: tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff)
Organization: Independent Users Guild
Lines: 39

In article <1988Jun22.223158.1366@LTH.Se> torsten@DNA.LTH.Se (Torsten Olsson) bellyaches:
>US PC programmers still live in a 7-bit world!
>
>But we don't!

Not one but two meaningless generalizations.  US PC programmers live in
a multitude of "worlds," 7-, 8-bit and otherwise.

>All right, you get a lot of credit for producing lovely programs
>like uEmacs, Picnix, Tcless, and the like. 

This is what passes for PC programming in Europe?  Unix ports and
clones?  Take a look at BRIEF, PC-WRITE, MKS Toolkit and LIST.COM
sometime.  Blame Unix for 7-bit parochialism if you want, not PC
programmers.

> [then lists some characters]

>So, if your pet program is to become our pet, too, you have
>to rethink concerning using the 8th bit as a flag, you have
>to rewrite toupper, tolower, word scan, delete word, word
>counters and the like.

On the other hand, if you don't give a damn whether your program makes
the grade in Sweden or not, you can stick with what you're doing, or
publish the source and let Swedish programmers keep Swedish users happy
while we do the same here.  Just a thought.  :-)

In the meantime, if you have a complaint about the way some specific
programs behave, write the authors.  Thanks for the reminder about the
international character set, but I imagine most people (short of the
Unix clonesters, whom you seem to rely on unduly) either give it to you
for free (per the examples above) or have good reasons to abandon it in
favor of a performance tradeoff.

-- 
Tom Neff			UUCP: ...!cmcl2!phri!dasys1!tneff
	"None of your toys	CIS: 76556,2536	       MCI: TNEFF
	 will function..."	GEnie: TOMNEFF	       BIX: t.neff (no kidding)