Isn't that what became (7-bit-)ASCII later the ages-old Telex charset ? Which was standardised internationally even before WW2, IIRR (too lazy to look it up now.)
Even the "original IBM" 8-bit charset (often confused with, or used as synomnym to "US-ASCII"), later codified as ISO 8851-1, had its precursor on the IBM "composer" machines - the extended version of the ubiquitous electrical IBM typewriter with the exchangeable bullet head - where they had even some of the "block graphical" signs on it, in addition to most of the (West)European diacriticals and a part of the Greek alphabet (those letters mostly used in math.) There are some anecdotes about how IBM finally did put it together into that "original PC" set of 256 signs but it is definitely of better use than the "Latin-1" (ISO 8859-1) for covering (almost all Western and Northern) European languages; I would assume that IBM did quite some statistical research, and certainly had the organisational resources and experience in its core "business machnine" market. In any case, ISO 8851-1 or Code Page 437, or "IBM" _is_ the default _8-bit_ charset for the Net (as is ASCII as the default for 7-bit.) And I get outraged when I see some idiot mailserver installed for treating it as an "unknown characterset for Internet use". // Heimo Claasen // <hammer at revobild dot net> // Brussels 2004-01-01 The WebPlace of ReRead - and much to read ==> http://www.revobild.net To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
