[Info-vax] character set translation for language accents

[P. Sture]

In article <wsKdnZpFWcYaF3rUnZ2dnUVZ_gidnZ2d at giganews.com>,
 "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> wrote:

> jcwoman1963 at hotmail.com wrote:
> > I'm writing an interface between some software that runs on Windows
> > and my software that runs on VMS, and having a problem with character
> > set translation.  The Windows software is using a character set that
> > enables accented characters.  I'm not sure exactly which one (utf-?)
> > but the user interface for the software is in French.  When it sends
> > text data through my interface, it's sending the accented characters.
> > 
> > When the data comes into my program on VMS, the accented characters
> > have been lost/removed.  My software is running on VMS 8.3 on
> > Integrity.  Is there some way to make it accept/handle the accented
> > characters properly?
> 
> Perhaps you are having a problem with eight bit bytes?  AIRC the 
> accented characters are all above 128 decimal.  If something clears the 
> high order bit, your accented characters morph into something else.
> 
> I can remember the bad old days when mail/net-news did not support 
> accented characters and Arne Vajhoej's surname came transliterated to 
> Vajhxj.  Even now, the Thunderbird mail/news client can't cope with it, 
> as you can see above.  It's changing an "o" with a slash to "oe"  I 
> think I can actually receive it correctly  but not send it.

What happens on VMS MAIL here is that accented characters trigger the 
message to be sent in MIME format.

-- 
Paul Sture