On Tue, Apr 17, 2001 at 02:04:57PM -0500, Ayers, Mike wrote:
> Aesthetic concerns are nice, but the English-reading community has quite
> firmly set them in the "optional" category. For at least one language,
> 7 bits was plenty.
Picking up something slightly more complex, but not high budget or
mathematical, I can't say I agree. Outside ASCII, Space:1889 needs
the copyright sign, directional quotes, the multiplication sign, the
pound sign, a hyphen and a dash distinct from the negative sign, and a
dagger. S�dmeer also shows up in the text as a foreign name; I'm
not sure it counts. I have seen na�ve in books, even on this mailing
list, and fa�ade and jalape�o in common English use, and r�le in
older books (and occasionaly on mailing lists.) Actually, CP1252 seems
to cover it pretty well, but it isn't covered by ASCII. It might barely
be coverable by a hypothetical 7-bit code, but not without stepping on
the C0 codes and probably not one you could use to type C or Unix.
--
David Starner - [email protected]
Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org
"I don't care if Bill personally has my name and reads my email and
laughs at me. In fact, I'd be rather honored." - Joseph_Greg
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Jul 06 2001 - 00:17:16 EDT