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Date: 20 Oct 92 14:44:59 GMT
From: cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!ira.uka
.de!ira.uka.de!math.fu-berlin.de!weberwu@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU  (Debora Weber-Wul
ff)
Subject: Why no umlauts in Ada comments?
Message-ID: <MD57N5C@math.fu-berlin.de>
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Why on earth are comments specifically defined in the LRM to just
be the letters "A".."Z", "a",,"z", the digits and some special characters?
Why is the definition not just *any* character representation except
carriage return? We are using Meridian's Ada compiler for PCs, and
the students comment their code in German. German, as well as many
other non-English languages, has a number of special letters, such as
a-umlaut, o-umlaut ant u-umlaut. We have to write out "ae" "oe" and
"ue", which doesn't look very nice at all, although strangely enough
the "ess-zet" representation *is* accepted. 

Just because the DoD financed the language shouldn't mean that you have
to use English in your comments! Is this an oversight - typical for
anglo-american centric designers - or is there a real reason?
-- 
Debora Weber-Wulff                       dww@inf.fu-berlin.de
Institut fuer Informatik                 +49 30 89691 124
Nestorstr. 8-9                           (INCLUDE "standard.disclaimer")
D-W-1000 Berlin 31                       (PRINTN (WITTY-MESSAGE TODAY))