The evolution of mainframe facilities for handling "non-standard" right-to-left text (and thus boustrophedon text too) has been gradual.
MVCIN came early on. TRTR and TRTRE are more recent. It is now possible to perform lexical-breakout operations on right-to-left text directly and easily. (I have done it routinely and repeatedly.) What is important here is that the mainframe has become less parochial. In my experience most non-anglophone mainframe programmers---not all of them certainly---read [and even speak some] English. The users for whom they develop systems do not usually do so. On-line applications must use the local vernacular, often more than one of them; and these "new" right-to-left instructions make it easier to do so when the local vernacular is written right-to-left. I shall make no further contributions to this thread because it seems to me, like others, to have gone astray. --jg ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
