On Wednesday, 02/21/2007 at 09:02 CST, Adam Thornton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Feb 21, 2007, at 12:12 AM, Alan Altmark wrote: > > Or what about the > > dozens of ASCII code pages? > > They aren't ASCII. > > ASCII is seven bits. It's completely specified. Do what you like > with the high bit set, but it isn't ASCII.
:-) They all contain the orignal ASCII "reference version" subset of the 7-bit code. In 1968, the 7-bit ASCII code was published as ANSI X3.4, and "ASCII" disappeared as an Official Entity. It immediately spawned country- or language-specific versions. They were enshrined in ISO 646/ECMA-6 in the early '70s (most recently updated in '91) and, including the "reference version". The standard explicitly allows the variants to continue to exist. But the industry then reclaimed the high-order bit for application programmers to use and ISO 8859/ECMA-94 and its umpteen variants were created, and ISO 646 fell into disuse, as did FIPS 32-1, the US Gov't equivalent standard. Still too confusing, so ISO 10646 (Unicode) came along, containing, yessiree, the ASCII subset in its rightful place. I should note that the accompanying brochure from the ISO Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Board promised a brighter future and more time for fun on the beach. I'm still waiting. tap..tap..tap.. So, today, the meaning of the unqualified words "ASCII" and"EBCDIC", are just concepts, devoid of any specific meaning except as a reference to their respective common subset of code points. Alan Altmark z/VM Development IBM Endicott ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
