Date: Mon, 16 Oct 1995 11:55:24 EST From: "Kaleb S. KEITHLEY" <kaleb@x.org> To: ache@astral.msk.su Cc: hackers@freefall.FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: A couple problems in FreeBSD 2.1.0-950922-SNAP Message-ID: <199510161555.LAA07471@exalt.x.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 16 Oct 1995 04:44:58 EST. <fYQaRWmeM5@ache.dialup.demos.ru>
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>>>Bruce, I agree with you and POSIX agree with us.
>>>Default table must be strict ASCII per POSIX.
>>>So, we can close this table propogating subject.
>>Does POSIX mention ASCII? ANSI allows other encodings
>>of course, and is only strict for letters and digits,
>>but only letters are very important.
>Well 1003.1 says something about minimal subset to run C pgms.
>Comparing ASCII and 8859-1 is clear that ASCII is more minimal.
ANSI/POSIX/ISO C require that *at least* (my emphasis) A..Z, a..z,
0..9, !"#$&'()*+,-./:;<=>?[/]^_{~ , the space character, and control
characters for horizontal tab, vertical tab, and form feed. For source
files you must have a newline. For the execution environment the
character set must also have control characters for alert, backspace,
carriage return and new line.
The only other restriction are on the decimal digits, 0..9, which must
have a value one greater than the value of the previous.
ASCII meets this criteria. ISO8859-1 also meets this criteria. There is
not requirement that you use the most minimally compliant character set.
I do not understand your insistence that the C locale be strictly ASCII
and no more.
I claim that it would be useful in the C locale if the default char-
type table were to be nominally populated for 8859-1, i.e. excluding
the upper and lower designations.
You claim that doing so will break Russian and Japanese users. I claim
that these users won't be using the C locale anyway. The fact that your
locale support is broken and the utility programs are broken is merely
an argument that they should be fixed. :-)
--
Kaleb
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