RE: 8-bit ASCII

From: Hart, Edwin F. (Edwin.Hart@jhuapl.edu)
Date: Fri Feb 23 2001 - 10:14:03 EST


The US X3 committee changed its name to NCITS, National Committee for
Information Technology Standardization several years ago after it
established its web site.

Since several people have stated that the title of the US ANSI/ISO 8859-1
standard does not include "8-bit ASCII" in the title, then the US does not
have an official 8-bit ASCII standard. End of Discussion!

Ed Hart
Former Chairman of US L2 Committee for Codes and Character Sets.

Edwin F. Hart
edwin.hart@jhuapl.edu
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
11100 Johns Hopkins Road
Laurel, MD 20723-6099
USA
+1-443-778-6926 (Baltimore area)
+1-240-228-6926 (Washington, DC area)
+1-443-778-1093 (fax)
+1-240-228-1093 (fax)

-----Original Message-----
From: jsbien@mimuw.edu.pl [mailto:jsbien@mimuw.edu.pl]
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2001 09:22
To: Unicode List
Cc: Unicode List
Subject: Re: 8-bit ASCII

On Tue, 20 Feb 2001 John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com> wrote:

> DougEwell2@cs.com wrote:
>
>
> >> Even 8-bit ASCII is a correct term meaning ISO-8859-1.
> >
> > I would question that. Understandable, yes, but not really correct.
>
> No, it *is* correct. ANSI X.3 (which has a new name these days) in fact
> did define an 8-bit American Standard Code for Information Interchange,
> being exactly the same as ISO 8859-1.

Your statement seems to contradict those of Edwin Hart and David
Gallardo quoted below. What was exactly the ANSI X.3 standard?

On Tue, 20 Feb 2001 "Hart, Edwin F." <Edwin.Hart@jhuapl.edu> wrote:

> I am unsure if "8-bit ASCII" is a well-defined term. "ASCII" implies
> X3.4-1986 and the 7-bit ASCII code. It was my intention for ISO/IEC
8859-1
> to be the 8-bit ASCII standard. When the US adopted ISO 8859-1 as a US
> standard (ANSI/ISO 8859-1), as editor I asked ANSI to add "(8-bit ASCII)"
to
> the end of the title. I never purchased a copy to see if ANSI did this.

[...]

On Tue, 20 Feb 2001 "David Gallardo" <dgallardo@mediaone.net> wrote:

> No, the 8-bit ANSI standard (ANSI/ISO 8859-1-1987) does not include
"ASCII"
> as part of its title. It is listed by ANSI as
> "8-Bit Single Byte Coded Graphic Character Sets - Part 1: Latin Alphabet
No.
> 1"
>
> So, no, there is no such thing as 8-bit ASCII, though Latin 1 is
frequently
> referred to as such.

Best regards

Janusz

-- 
                     ,   
dr hab. Janusz S. Bien, prof. UW
Prof. Janusz S. Bien, Warsaw Uniwersity
http://www.orient.uw.edu.pl/~jsbien/
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