On 14 September 2016 at 14:53, Paul Gilmartin <0000000433f07816-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote: >>But Katakana shares the same hex values as lower case English letters. I have >>always had upper case User IDs and passwords. Perhaps it is a RACF >>restriction? >> > What technical concern (I presume there was one) motivated EBCDIC's > usurping the Latin minuscule code points for non-Latin characters, rather > than first employing the code points left uncommitted in the s360 Principles > as the ISO8859-x family did?
Memory, or rather, lack thereof, presumably in the 3277 terminal and its control unit. Plus IBM's famous early indifference to non-US character requirements. Each country/region got a locally designed (maybe even locally implemented, at first?) character set (glyph) ROM and mapping table for the characters thought to be needed. Since the 3277 did not display lower case Latin letters anyway, it probably seemed reasonable to use those positions for the fairly large Katakana set. Perhaps keyboard mapping also contributed. If there existed typewriters with both Latin and Katakana, that keystroke mapping with the ability to lock the keyboard into one or the other mode would be someting to be preserved. Tony H. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
