RE: Thoughts about characters transmission

[keld@dkuug.dk (Keld J|rn Simonsen)]

Rick Troth writes:

> >Also I would like to emphasis the need for world-wide solutions.
> >This would mean that ISO 8859-1 would not be a good candidate,
> >we need something ASCII based (or even with a smaller repertoire
> >than ASCII to cover the problems with EBCDIC and national ISO 646
> >variants).
> 
>         I don't understand the warrant here,  Keld.   You're right that
> we need world-wide solutions and you're right that we should have some-
> thing ASCII based.   How does these make ISO 8859-1 a bad choice?

Because 8859-1 does not run on every computer in the world, and we
cannot expect it to do so, ever. 8859-1 is for western Europe.
Mandating 8859-1 would introduce the same problems for the
rest of the world that Western Europe (where I live) have had 
for decades with ASCII.

>         I've spent a significant part of *my* life working with others
> toward a true solution to the  ASCII <---> EBCDIC  problem.   Some form
> of concensus was reached a long time ago and folks have successfully
> "beat IBM over the head"  with it,  and IBM has finally acknowledged a
> "de facto network EBCDIC"  [my term]  which they call CodePage 1047.
> CP 1047 maps one-for-one with ISO 8859-1.   The mapping of 1047/8859-1
> is the most palatable mapping to the most sites on the InterNet.

It only works for Western European languages.

Keld