On Thu, 09 Mar 2000 00:25:31 +0100 (CET), Richard Menedetter wrote:
> "Samuel W. Heywood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> SH> There are many popularly accepted "standard" reference sources that
> SH> show an ascii table consisting of 256 characters.
> These references do not show ASCII, but eg CP437 (standard DOS Codepage)
> CP437 consists of:
> 0-127: standard ASCII
> 128-255: cp437 extension to ASCII
> Almost all codepages differ only in the high ascii range.
> eg cp850 (equivalent to iso-latin-1 in dos) consists of ASCII+cp850
> extension ...
> SH> If ascii does indeed have only 128 characters then there ought to be
> SH> a footnote and explanation about it in all of the "standard"
> SH> reference sources.
> There IS :)
> (if not than you have a really bad reference ... :)
You are right about that.
> SH> This is why we have a problem.
> I still can't see the problem ...
The problem is that all this business about code pages and extended ascii
character sets isn't taught in the schools here. Almost everybody uses
the standard default code page. There is a general presumption that
everybody wants to write English. If you want to learn how to do email in
another language, then you have to learn about it on your own. I have
completed many computer courses here in a local community college. In
not a single course was this subject matter ever touched upon. Most of
my references are from textbooks printed in the US. The only references
to code pages and character sets appear in the appendix. There are no
special chapters and study materials provided on the subject. I have the
impression that all this stuff is general knowledge among the
computer-literate people in Europe. In the US most people who are otherwise
very computer-literate know nothing about code-pages and special characters,
even though the English language has adopted hundreds of very commonly used
non-English words which require special characters. Whenever most people
want to use a special character, they just invoke some special function
for it in their M$-Word-processor. Very few people want to know about how to
create special characters by use of compatible technology, which calls for
a normal text editor of course. The major computerdoms of this age have all
decreed that compatible technology is attainable only through universal
acceptance of Gatesware, and anyone who disagrees is a heretic.
I hope you understand the problem . . . :(
<snip>
Sam Heywood
-- This mail was written by user of Arachne, the Ultimate Internet Client
