On Thu, 8 May 1997, der Mouse wrote:

> It sounds as though your idea of "practical" is "like MS-DOS".  If I
> used the i386 port, I would object to moving pcvt closer to messy-doss
> and away from real internationalization standards like ISO 8859.  I
> wouldn't object to providing a mode that behaved more like a DOS
> console, provided it were optional and went away totally in the absence
> of some kernel build option.

No no, not at all, far from it.  Actually, I consider MS-DOS (and
microsoft in general) far from practical, (If I wanted dos, I'd use dos,
but that 2nd partition doesn't get much use theese days).  I just would
like to see it easier to practical things like replacing the character set
with anything (if that set happens to be the same as the DOS character
set, then that's fine, but it could very well be some extended language
support, or a character set to mach anything someone might want to look
at). I just don't like being limited to 94 (or 96) characters in a set
that can be anything you want (as long as it's one of the predefined, very
similar character sets).  Until something like UNICODE becomes widely
used, we're allways going to have differences in character sets, and UNIX
has allways been flexible. 

> > How do others feel about it?  I guess "real" UNIX people are just
> > happy not to be using punch cards...
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean here.  It sounds insulting somehow, as if
> UNIX were so stuck in the dark ages it counts itself lucky to have
> lower case or something.  I sure don't feel that way; I use 8859-1
> routinely and will probably go to Unicode or 10646 or something
> covering a bit more than just Western Europe at some point.

I'm very sorry if it came out that way.  I meant it as a compliment, and
as a joke.  Maybe as an insult to myself because I'm not as experienced as
the rest of you, you see I've got no recolection of "the good old days". 
The more I read of the history of UNIX, the more I wish I had been there
to participate in it.  The whole point is that the measure of a system
isn't it's console, but what the operator uses that console to do.  A real
programmer could make an application on punchcards, or on an X console.

Anyway, if I'm way off here - if PCVT hadles things like character sets
they "right" way - then tell me and I'll shut up.  I think PCVT is great,
I just thought there was some room for improvement, and if others feel the
same way (others who would have some insight into what the "right" way
is), I'll be happy to hack around with it for a while, see what I can come
up with.  I just don't know what the "right" way is, I was hoping to spark
a discussion.

	Rick

=========================================================================
Rick Byers                                      Internet Access Worldwide
rickb@iaw.on.ca                                      System Administrator
Welland, Ontario, Canada                                    (905)714-1400
http://www.iaw.on.ca/rickb/                         http://www.iaw.on.ca/