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From: sommar@enea.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Characters with codes >= 128
Message-ID: <2251@enea.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 5-Sep-87 16:43:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: enea.2251
Posted: Sat Sep  5 16:43:14 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 6-Sep-87 19:47:02 EDT
References: <8709020424.AA05821@rand-unix.rand.org>
Reply-To: sommar@enea.UUCP(Erland Sommarskog)
Followup-To: comp.lang.ada
Organization: ENEA DATA Svenska AB, Sweden
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In a recent article colbert@hermix.UUCP writes:
 >You can create your own Character type by defining an enumeration type that
 >has character literals.
 >	type Character_Type is (Nul, Del, ..., 'A', 'B', ...,
 >				Koo_Kai, Khoo_Khai, ....);
 >...
 >Once you have this character type defined, you can create a string type by
 >defining an array of this character type:
 >
 >	type String_Type is array (positive <>) of Character_Type;
 >...
 >However, you will have to use catenation to create string_type expressions that
 >contain your countries special characters (and of course non-printable
 >characters).
 >...
 >As for the I/O of your language specific characters, you will need to create
 >a Thai_Text_IO (or something equivalent).  Ada does not say that Text_IO is
 >the ONLY text I/O package, only that it is the standard text I/O package.  In
 >this case you need something non-standard.

I think Martin Moore's solution was much more simple and elegant. It will
work on any Ada system that doesn't check character assignments for 
Constraint_error.
  This solution requires one hell lot of work and it isn't portable from
OS to another. Yes, I can write my own Text_IO, but guess how fun I find
that. And, I will have to write one Text_IO for each OS I want to work
with. Guess why there is a standard Text_IO. It gives you a standard 
interface.
  But even better, a change in the language definition would be the 
approriate. It's ridiculus that perfectly good letters are being 
regarded as illegal and unprintable.

-- 

Erland Sommarskog       
ENEA Data, Stockholm    
sommar@enea.UUCP