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On Wed, 16 Dec 92 18:07:04 EST, you said:
bit Unicode through out including file names. Before you know it
there are going to be *millions* of computers running NT. How is this
going to be handled in FTP, Telnet, etc.? I believe that the Internet
should start migrating from predominantly 8 bit byte US ASCII to fixed
size 16 Unicode in most of its protocols where character strings
occur.
Hmm.. Let's back up 20 years.
Before you know it, there will be *dozens* of machines with 9-bit
bytes. I believe that we should start migrating from predominantly
6-bit code to fixed size 9-bit in most of the tape files we currently
exchange.
From the Jargon File, version 2.9.6:
bucky bits: /buh'kee bits/ n. 1. obs. The bits produced by the
CONTROL and META shift keys on a SAIL keyboard, resulting in a
9-bit keyboard character set. The MIT AI TV (Knight) keyboards
extended this with TOP and separate left and right CONTROL and META
keys, resulting in a 12-bit character set; later, LISP Machines
added such keys as SUPER, HYPER, and GREEK (see {space-cadet
keyboard}). 2. By extension, bits associated with `extra' shift
keys on any keyboard, e.g., the ALT on an IBM PC or command and
option keys on a Macintosh.
I'm glad to hear that NT is more guaranteed of *long term* success than
the SAIL stuff was..
--
Let's back 8 up years. The development of the universal multi-octet
code just started within ISO/IEC JTC1 SC2/WG2. After many years of tremendous
efforts finally a multi-octet code was adopted by 80% of ISO voting
members as ISO 10 646 with an intention to replace the 7-bit ASCII -
ISO 646.
The first multi-lingual plane of ISO 10 646 is equal to
UNICODE 1.1. UNICODE is pure 16 bit code system supported by UNICODE
consortium. The following companies are Unicode corporate members:
Adobe Sys., Apple Comp.Inc., Borland International, DEC, Ecological
linguistics, GO corporation, Hewlett Packard Company, I.B.M, Microsoft,
Lotus Development Company, NeXT Computers, Novell, SUN Microsystem
Computer Corporation, Symantec Corporation, The Research Libraries, Inc.,
Taligent, Inc., Unisys Corporation, WordPerfect Corporation, Xerox Corporation.
Besides Windows NT, Novell has announced Netware 4.0 to be based on
Unicode coding and Apple is claiming the same for Apple QuickDraw GX.
The support to UNicode is given by X-Open (in their XPG4/POSIX model)
and a new Data Type (just for supporting ISO-10646) is
introduced in ASN.1 and the
relevant CCITT documents i.e X.400 and X.500. Furthermore the new PEM
application is using the X.500 model and solutions for issuing certificates.
Unicode/ISO 10 646 is designed to meet the requirements of users in
countries that are not using the Latin alphabet as defined
in 7-bit ASCII and Internet is a global world network. Here in Europe
where we are using just the Latin alphabet we are facing with many
problems just becuase the curent Internet world is 7-bit ASCII. Could
you imagine that interchanging data in several european languages
in just one message is almost impossible with the current e-mail services.
Don't you think that the time has come for Internet to migrate
to 2x8-bit bytes?
Regards,
Borka Jerman-Blazic
Jozef Stefan Institut, Ljubljana, Slovenia