Text 25487, 71 rader
Skriven 2008-12-31 15:43:46 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
     Kommentar till en text av Dale Shipp (1:261/1466.0)
Ärende: Character sets
======================
Hello Dale,

On Tuesday December 30 2008 23:41, you wrote to me:

 DS> Over the years, there has been much discussion about those codes with
 DS> numeric values from 128 to 255.  I agree with you that they are not
 DS> part of ASCII, but have often been called the Extended ASCII
 DS> characters or high ASCII.

I know it is often called that, but both terms are misnomers nonetheless.
Although these characters are part of a set that is an extension of the ASCII
set, calling it "extended ASCII" would be wrong as that suggests the
extension(s) was/were defined by the same authority that defined the ASCII set
and that is definitely not the case.

 DS> In times gone by, they were even often prohibited in messages in many
 DS> echos.  For what it is worth (not much), EchoPol1 section 18 refers to
 DS> them and says that they are prohibited (but in the next breath allows
 DS> them).

Nevertheless, in this part of the world, that part of echopol was often used by
moderators to backup a ban on the use of non ASCII  characters.

In the eraly days, there were good reasons for not allowing 8 bit characters.
There was no generally accepted standard and there were some terminals around
that really acted funny. The VT100 for example used characters in the range
128-255 as control characters that could change the screen proporties. That
stuff has all been weeded out and at worst you see some garbage on the screen ,
but nothing crashes.

When I moderated the Dutch point echo, this was often a point of discussion
among users that had accents or umlauts in their name. They had a point, but
OTOH it was not clear that allowing it woulkd not give problems. So I had to
spend quit a bit of time explaining it.

Nowadays it is no longer a problem of course. In countries were extended
character sets are used, software that can not deal with it has been weeded out
long ago.

But I see that your software does not generate a CHRS kludge, so perhaps it is
one of those fossils that is 7 bits only.

 MVDV>> In a follow up you accused me of using wrong arithmetic
 MVDV>> when I wrote it appeared that Max strips the high bit.

 DS> Which was a nonsensical remark on his part in response to an accurate
 DS> statement on your part.

Thank you.

 MVDV>> That may be so, but that does not make my arithmetic invalid.

 DS> True -- the ones who said it was invalid did so because they not
 DS> understand what you were saying and went off (in mass) on another
 DS> direction.  What you said was clear to me, and needed no comment from
 DS> anyone.

I suspect that at least one of those jumping on the bandwagen was actually
trolling with the objective of making me look in error. I do not think I need
be specific.

 MVDV>> Nothing wrong with my arithmetic.

 DS> True, nor was there anything wrong with *your* statements.

Tnx.

Cheers, Michiel

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