Re: “. . . extremely difficult, quite impractical to code COBOL UTF-8 strings on a 3278, perhaps on any terminal”, on a 327X terminal, yes, though “difficult” is perhaps too strong a term; I am sure our Hebrew friends here on this list do it every day on their properly set up 327X terminal emulators. Those of us not needing to use non-Latin characters on a regular basis don’t necessarily familiarize ourselves with the needed emulator setup steps, but it is not impossible to learn.
As for “any terminal”, not so – Using my workstation I can code COBOL source code with UTF-8 strings relatively easily. Uploading it to the mainframe Unix file system as UTF-8 is trivial. Having the SCLM functionality to compile and store the executable from the Unix file system into the target executable PDSE file then becomes the blocker when the company hasn’t thought that far ahead. HOD? Sorry, not going there. They’ll have to pry my emulator software from my cold dead fingers first. I must admit that I am not familiar enough with the whole “enhanced ASCII” setup to have an informed opinion on it. Peter From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin Sent: Saturday, January 3, 2026 12:41 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Please vote for COBOL "idea" for reverse character translation On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 08:31:12 +0000, Farley, Peter wrote: >Sorry about that, I just pasted your text into an ISPF edit session with my >regular CCSID=1047 terminal setting and manually typed in the correct hex >double-byte values for the Russian, Greek, and Hebrew text. > ... Thanks for your perseverance. And this demonstrates that it's extremely difficult, quite impractical to code COBOL UTF-8 strings on a 3278, perhaps on any terminal. >Bad example. I should have opened a new terminal session with a UTF-8 CCSID >to do it the right way. > >My point was that in hex in an ISPF edit session you should see two vertical >hex characters for each of those UTF-8 characters, just like the horizontal >hex at the bottom of your post. > More than two for most Unicode characters. Unless 3270 data streams can be enhanced to support UTF-8, ISPF should reconsider its decade-s-old Statement of Direction never to support serial terminals. Most of us have on our desktops serial terminals which nicely support UTF-8. You're probably reading this with one now. Might HOD provide a solution? COBOL should provide Enhanced ASCII Support as XL C/C++ do. It Just Works; ISVs rely on it to port FOSSm relying on automatic CCS conversion. -- This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
