- From: Rick Troth <TROTH@ricevm1.rice.edu>
- Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1993 12:02:24 -0500 (CDT)
- To: Keld J|rn Simonsen <keld@dkuug.dk>, Andr'e PIRARD <PIRARD@vm1.ulg.ac.be>, "Robert G. Moskowitz" <0003858921@mcimail.com>, ietf-charsets@INNOSOFT.COM, ietf-822@dimacs.rutgers.edu, ietf@cnri.reston.va.us, WG-CHAR@rare.nl, Multi-byte Code Issues <ISO10646@jhuvm.rare.nl>
[please excuse this cross-post; I am following a thread]
>> The _most_important_point_ is that a single common representation code
>> be defined _for_the_line_ (suiting the purpose, namely to cover all national
>> languages in one single way) and that people be instructed that every bit
>> of text should travel in that code on the wire, whatever_the_protocol_is.
>
>I agree to most of what Andre '' is saying and I have an additional
>point here: that the single common representation code should be something
>that can be handled by existing software and hardware, ...
I agree with most of what André said, and agree with you on
this one point. But ...
>will take a long time before the conversion software is installed
>on all machines, or even a large share of the installed base.
>Also I would like to emphasis the need for world-wide solutions.
>This would mean that ISO 8859-1 would not be a good candidate,
>we need something ASCII based (or even with a smaller repertoire
>than ASCII to cover the problems with EBCDIC and national ISO 646
>variants).
I don't understand the warrant here, Keld. You're right that
we need world-wide solutions and you're right that we should have some-
thing ASCII based. How does these make ISO 8859-1 a bad choice?
I've spent a significant part of *my* life working with others
toward a true solution to the ASCII <---> EBCDIC problem. Some form
of concensus was reached a long time ago and folks have successfully
"beat IBM over the head" with it, and IBM has finally acknowledged a
"de facto network EBCDIC" [my term] which they call CodePage 1047.
CP 1047 maps one-for-one with ISO 8859-1. The mapping of 1047/8859-1
is the most palatable mapping to the most sites on the InterNet.
I see the common code André mentions. I see ISO 8859-1
"on the wire". I see some greater-than-8-bit code in the future
that is a superset of 8859-1. (and whether TCP has been super-
ceeded or wether we "tag" things, I am NOT addressing here)
What's the problem?
[I think it was Nathaniel who said, "memory is cheap and
bandwidth is cheaper". In agreement, I say we scrap the 16-bit
stop-gap solution and go directly to 32-bit and then start looking
toward bit-unconstrained (bit-free?) representations. Just my opinion]
>Keld
--
Rick Troth <troth@rice.edu>, Rice University, Information Systems
--Boundary (ID uEbHHWxWEwCKT9wM3evJ5w)
Received on Saturday, 10 July 1993 10:24:53 UTC