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