Ahh.. but that's the *current* interpretation. I've used a lot
of keyboards that were convinced that a 41 octal was a vertical
bar...
I have used ANSIs official registration of ASCII, in the ECME
registry according to ISO 2375, registration number 6, dated 1975/12/01.
It says on page 3.10:
2/1 ! Exclamation mark
5/14 ^ Upward arrow head circumflex accent
No "vertical bar", no "not sign" there.
Keld, you've missed the most crucial point. From the very start, those
characters have had those names... but ANSI X3.4 has also said from
the very beginning that those names are not intended to constrain how
the characters *look*.
It wasn't a matter of now-vanished special wording covering those two
characters only. ANSI X3.4 does not require that *any* of its codes
print the way the names and descriptions would suggest; in fact, it
explicitly disclaims any such requirement. Although there is general
understanding that ASCII code 2/1 prints as a vertical stroke (perhaps
of somewhat varying thickness) with a dot (perhaps not exactly circular)
a short distance below it, printing it as a vertical bar of uniform
thickness with no dot is *not* a violation of ANSI X3.4.
I'm not aware of any protocol RFC, specifically including 822 and 1341,
that refers to any document other than ANSI X3.4 when defining what
"ASCII" means.
Any definition of "character set" that is to include ASCII (ANSI X3.4)
can't be too nitpicking and pedantic. In particular, I very much doubt
that one can devise a wording that includes ASCII but excludes Unicode,
as some seem to want. Also in particular, I suspect attempts to write
a fairly narrow definition are going to end up being futile, and the
time is best spent on more substantive issues.
Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
henry(_at_)zoo(_dot_)toronto(_dot_)edu utzoo!henry