Well, the good news is that ASCII is a proper subset of Latin-1.  By that, 
I mean that every ASCII character is also a Latin-1 character, with the 
exact same bit encoding in an 8-bit byte (an "octet").  Of course, ASCII is 
a 7-bit encoding (coded character set), but it is very frequently 
represented in 8-bit units with the high-order bit set to 0.

The bad news is that Latin-1 has approximately double the number of 
characters as ASCII.  If you encounter any of those characters, there is no 
obvious single rule that you could use to "convert" such characters into 
ASCII.  They are simply different characters.  There are a number of common 
"fallback" representations for many of the characters that might (and I 
emphasize: *might*) be acceptable in a single culture or language (e.g., 
American English), but I doubt that they would be universally acknowledged 
as "right".  (For example the Latin-1 character that I would call 
"e-acute", which I can display on my PC as "�", is not available in 
ASCII.  Some environments might tolerate converting that to a plain old "e" 
--- this is common in USA newspapers, for example.  Other environments, 
trying to capture the proper semantics, might covert it into the two 
character sequence "e'".  But those are, of course, no more correct than 
representing the Japanese character for the English word "gate" by the 
sequence of ASCII characters that crudely approximate the Japanese 
pronunciation of that character.)

Hope this helps,
    Jim

At 05:03 AM 6/21/2001 +0530 Thursday, cls raj wrote:
>We have a specific requirment of converting Latin -1 character set ( iso 
>8859-1 ) text  to ASCII charactet set ( a set of only 128 characters). Is 
>there any special set of utilities available or service providers who can 
>do that type of job.
>
>It is kind of critical for my current project, I would appreciate if I 
>have some quick HELP for this.
>
>Thanks
>
>Lourdu Sagayaraj ( RAJ)
>
>Here is my destination  ascii character set :
>
>
>
>0       NUL             32      blank           64      @               96 
 >     `
>1       SOH             33      !               65      A               97 
 >     a
>2       STX             34      "               66      B               98 
 >     b
>3       ETX             35      #               67      C               99 
 >     c
>4       EOT             36      $               68      D 
>100     d
>5       ENQ             37      %               69      E 
>101     e
>6       ACK             38      &               70      F 
>102     f
>7       BEL             39      '               71      G 
>103     g
>8       BS              40      (               72      H 
>104     h
>9       HT              41      )               73      I 
>105     i
>10      LF              42      *               74      J 
>106     j
>11      VT              43      +               75      K 
>107     k
>12      FF              44      ,               76      L 
>108     l
>13      CR              45      -               77      M 
>109     m
>14      SO              46      .               78      N 
>110     n
>15      SI              47      /               79      O 
>111     o
>16      DLE             48      0               80      P 
>112     p
>17      DC1             49      1               81      Q 
>113     q
>18      DC2             50      2               82      R 
>114     r
>19      DC3             51      3               83      S 
>115     s
>20      DC4             52      4               84      T 
>116     t
>21      NAK             53      5               85      U 
>117     u
>22      SYN             54      6               86      V 
>118     v
>23      ETB             55      7               87      W 
>119     w
>24      CAN             56      8               88      X 
>120     x
>25      EM              57      9               89      Y 
>121     y
>26      SUB             58      :               90      Z 
>122     z
>27      ESC             59      ;               91      [ 
>123     {
>28      FS              60      <               92      \ 
>124     |
>29      GS              61      =               93      ] 
>125     }
>30      RS              62      >               94      ^ 
>126     ~
>31      US              63      ?               95      _ 
>127     del
>
>
>
>_________________________________________________________________________
>Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
>
>

========================================================================
Jim Melton --- Editor of ISO/IEC 9075-* (SQL)     Phone: +1.801.942.0144
Oracle Corporation            Oracle Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
1930 Viscounti Drive          Standards email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sandy, UT 84093-1063           Personal email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
USA                                                Fax : +1.801.942.3345
========================================================================
=  Facts are facts.  However, any opinions expressed are the opinions  =
=  only of myself and may or may not reflect the opinions of anybody   =
=  else with whom I may or may not have discussed the issues at hand.  =
========================================================================


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