On Mon, 16 Sep 91 19:06:03 -0400, leo j mclaughlin iii wrote:
The magic of 8-bit datums has nothing to do with text, be it US or West-Euro-
centric. The magic of 8-bit datums is that 99% (rapidly approaching 99.9'BAR'
of the processors in the world use 8-bit bytes.
What happens on that future day when it's generally recognized that that's too
small a datum? You're making a supposition that the maximum unsigned basic
datum in computer architectures will always be:
n
(2 )
2 - 1
where n is presently 3. I don't think that's a safe long-term assumption.
The best thing you can say about 8-bit bytes is that it's nice for BCD.