* 8-Bit characters for Ada
@ 1988-11-15 0:03 David B. Kinder
0 siblings, 0 replies; 2+ messages in thread
From: David B. Kinder @ 1988-11-15 0:03 UTC (permalink / raw)
AI-420 (submitted over 3 years ago) brought up the issue of an an 8-bit
character type. This should be a hot issue with non-US Ada customers who
should reasonably insist on support for their (non-English) characters in
STRING variables and in TEXT_IO. I've seen packages that define a new
extended character type, however this character type can't be used with
TEXT_IO, so a whole new (and non-standard) I/O package must be used.
Are there Ada users concerned with this problem? Have there been any
further thoughts by the LMC/ARG on supporting 8-bit characters? Can we get
some definitive ruling on AI-420? What do you Ada developers think about
direct language support for 8-bit characters?
-- David Kinder, BiiN
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 2+ messages in thread
* Re: 8-Bit characters for Ada
@ 1988-11-20 21:33 Erland Sommarskog
0 siblings, 0 replies; 2+ messages in thread
From: Erland Sommarskog @ 1988-11-20 21:33 UTC (permalink / raw)
David Kinder (kinder@biin.com) writes:
>AI-420 (submitted over 3 years ago) brought up the issue of an an 8-bit
>character type. This should be a hot issue with non-US Ada customers who
>should reasonably insist on support for their (non-English) characters in
>STRING variables and in TEXT_IO. I've seen packages that define a new
>extended character type, however this character type can't be used with
>TEXT_IO, so a whole new (and non-standard) I/O package must be used.
I recall I brought up this problem in this newsgroup a little more than a
year ago. The conclusion if you wanted to use eight-bit characters was
to define a new type with a new Text_IO or to simply cheat. (You are
not really required to write an entirely new Text_IO you can map to
the old, but you still have problems with being non-standard.) The big
problem with Ada is that it defines only characters 32-126 as printable.
It also says that a user that in/outputs non-prinable charcaters cannot
rely on that Text_IO works as described.
I generally very hesitant to proposals to change the Ada standard. One
point with Ada was that it should be complete. But a minor change like
extending Ada to support the ISO/Latin standards (8859/1-9) has my full
support. I even see it as necessary. At minimum 8859/1 should be supported.
I don't know about AI-420. Could you, or anyone else, give more info?
--
Erland Sommarskog
ENEA Data, Stockholm
sommar@enea.se
"Frequently, unexpected errors are entirely unpredictable" - Digital Equipment
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