[Info-vax] Micro Focus to be acquired by Open Text

[Simon Clubley]

On 2022-09-01, Jan-Erik Söderholm <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com> wrote:
> Den 2022-09-01 kl. 21:06, skrev Johnny Billquist:
>> On 2022-09-01 20:04, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> On 2022-08-31, Jan-Erik Söderholm <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Sure. But Reflection was still "better"... :-)
>>>>
>>>> Putty lacks the 7-bit national character sets.
>>>> Both Reflection and Extra can handle those.
>>>>
>>>
>>> But haven't we moved on from this in the same way as we have moved on
>>> from requiring DEC keyboards instead of PC keyboards to access VMS
>>> systems ?
>>>
>>> Shouldn't VMS systems be generating code sets that are compatible
>>> with how code systems work today, not how they worked 30+ years ago ?
>>>
>>> How do the Nordic special characters get represented in the 7-bit
>>> character sets anyway or do they use 8-bits for some of the characters ?
>
> Just read up a little.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Replacement_Character_Set
>

Thank you.

Professionally, I've grown up with 8-bit character sets and then, later,
UTF-8, so seeing this earlier standard looks really weird and alien to me.

Having jogged my memory, about the only thing I can remember from my early
professional days was having to talk to some old (old at the time, not now)
printers by sending them '#' for the pound sign, but that was to do with
how you talked to the (old) printer.

The idea that the same 7-bit character position can mean different
things in adjacent countries (such as Norway and Sweden) is indeed a
very alien idea to me and that would mean a company operating in both
countries would have some serious data interchange issues.

>
> Jonny is of course completely right here.
> Simon is lacking knowledge the Nordic ASCII 7-bit chat sets.
>

You are quite right Jan-Erik. I'm used to the 8-bit way of thinking
and this is a very different mindset.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.