At 00:14 -0700 9/29/1999, Paul Keinanen wrote:
>On Tue, 28 Sep 1999 08:37:14 -0700 (PDT) Francois Yergeau wrote:
>
> >ˆÄ 07:10 1999-09-28 -0700, Frank da Cruz a ˆ©crit :
> >>In interactive telecommunications, we have the following situation:
> >>
> >> 1. Host sends "login:" (or any other prompt).
> >> 2. User is supposed to type her ID (or any other response).
> >>
> >>When using Unicode, the terminal emulator may not print the final character
> >>of the prompt because it doesn't know yet whether any combining characters
> >>will follow.
> >
> >There is no good reason for the terminal not to print the final character
> >when received. If a combining character comes later, the terminal simply
> >has to redisplay the combination over the previous glyph.
>
>There is one situation in which this does not work.
>
>Assume you have a hardcopy terminal with a print wheel.
[snip]
ROTFLOL. A Unicode protocol on a daisywheel terminal? You can't even
upgrade to a dot-matrix printer?
>If the print wheel has both the base character and base
>character+specific combining mark (non precomposed character
>available) as separate glyphs, how should this be handled. This might
>happen with some newly encoded language that does not get new
>precomposed characters. Erasing the base character glyph from the
>paper is not an option, when the combining mark arrives some time
>later
[snip]
If we're going to bronze age technology, I will remind you that the
later IBM Selectric typewriters and terminals had rolls of erasing
tape, used to lift the ink right off the paper when the user pressed
the Delete key.
>Paul Keinˆ§nen
>
-- Edward Cherlin edward.cherlin.sy.67@aya.yale.edu "It isn't what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you know that ain't so."--Mark Twain, or else some other prominent 19th century humorist and wit
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