Cobol - Response from those outside US (North/South America?)

Author

Response from those outside US (North/South America?)

William M. Klein

2004-10-04, 8:55 pm

In reading a document recently, I started to wonder if the term "ASCII" was used
internationally (i.e. outside the US - and all of the "Americas" if the "A" in
ASCII were taken very generally)? Does it normally mean the 7-bit or the 8-bit
version of this character set (and what currency sign does it usually mean -
outside the US).

Clearly this goes away with "Unicode" and 10646, but I don't know of any
"commonly used" (or as common as "ASCII") name for the character set defined in:

"ISO/IEC 646, Information technology - ISO 7-bit coded character set for
information interchange"

much less an 8-bit ISO Standard.

--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com

Richard

2004-10-05, 3:55 am

"William M. Klein" <wmklein@nospam.netcom.com> wrote in message news:<9_j8d.2655428$6p.445570@news.easynews.com>...
> In reading a document recently, I started to wonder if the term "ASCII" was used
> internationally (i.e. outside the US - and all of the "Americas" if the "A" in
> ASCII were taken very generally)?

I don't think the 'A' is intended to mean 'the Americas generally',
ASCII doesn't do varieties of Spanish and Portugese well. Just as
ANSI means 'The US of A' and, it seems to me, that many U.S.Americans
wouldn't know what 'the other Americas' would refer to: "Do you mean
Hawaii ?"

> Does it normally mean the 7-bit or the 8-bit
> version of this character set (and what currency sign does it usually mean -
> outside the US).

ASCII is 7 bit with 32 control codes space, numbers, upper and lower
case A-Z and a few special characters including $ (dollar).

> "ISO/IEC 646, Information technology - ISO 7-bit coded character set for
> information interchange"

ISO7

> much less an 8-bit ISO Standard.

Lueko Willms

2004-10-05, 3:55 pm

.. Am 04.10.04
schrieb wmklein@nospam.netcom.com (William M. Klein)
auf /COMP/LANG/COBOL
in 9_j8d.2655428$6p.445570@news.easynews.com
ueber Response from those outside US (North/South America?)

WMK> In reading a document recently, I started to wonder if the term
WMK> "ASCII" was used internationally (i.e. outside the US - and all
WMK> of the "Americas" if the "A" in ASCII were taken very generally)?

Yes, the term ASCII is used internationally, and, as far as I can
see, more often than IA5 as defined by ISO 646. The US companies still
dominate the information technology, and their use of the term ASCII
largely prevails.

WMK> Does it normally mean the 7-bit or the 8-bit version of this
WMK> character set (and what currency sign does it usually mean -
WMK> outside the US).

There is no 8-bit version of ASCII. ASCII _is_ a 7-bit character
set.

But the term ASCII is quite often mistakenly used for the character
set used in the IBM PC with MS-DOS, i.e. the IBM code pages 437, and
in Western Europe, code page 850, i.e. what Microsoft calls the "OEM
character set", while Microsofts own version of ISO 8859-1 or Latin-1
is called "ANSI", as Microsoft had called it.

But, of course, there are knowledgable people who know how to
distinguish IA5 i.e. International Alphabet No. 5, its IRV, i.e.
International Reference Version, and their national variants resp.
reference versions. ASCII is actually just version No. 6 of IA5, as
registered by the registration office for character sets.

Here in Germany, the German version of IA5, as defined in DIN 66003,
is of course being in use, but many people would identify it not as
the German Reference Version of IA5, but as German version of ASCII...

So, there is a lot of confusion.

WMK> Clearly this goes away with "Unicode" and 10646, but I don't know of
WMK> any "commonly used" (or as common as "ASCII") name for the character
WMK> set defined in:
WMK>
WMK> "ISO/IEC 646, Information technology - ISO 7-bit coded character
WMK> set for information interchange"
WMK>
WMK> much less an 8-bit ISO Standard.

The common name for the charcter set defined in ISO 646 is "IA5".
But ASCII is, in my opinion, more widely used. Erroneously, of course.

Yours,
Lüko Willms http://www.mlwerke.de
/--------- L.WILLMS@jpberlin.de -- Alle Rechte vorbehalten --

"Ohne Pressefreiheit, Vereins- und Versammlungsrecht ist keine
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