From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
From: "Thomas Bushnell, BSG" <tb+usenet@becket.net>
Message-ID: <87r8ognalk.fsf@becket.becket.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
References: <20020122182852.0CEC719981@mail.cse.psu.edu>, <3C4F0511.50CEABD3@strakt.com>
Subject: Re: [9fans] Getting started in Plan9 - help
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 09:38:32 +0000
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 43867c14-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

boyd@strakt.com (Boyd Roberts) writes:

> "Thomas Bushnell, BSG" wrote:
> > The ASCII BS charactec is specifically to help the "backup and
> > overstrike" operation.
>
> Some unix tty drivers would do this.  They'd overstrike with a space
> and then a BS :)

Some overstrikes are easier than others.

There are two misunderstandings about ASCII that piss me off, that's
all.

One misunderstanding is that "ASCII doesn't represent accents", which
is totally wrong; it was deliberately constructed to allow for accents
for all/many languages that use the latin alphabet.  The idea was (as
I mentioned previously) to use overstriking.

Now it turns out that the idea was not as good as just separate codes
for the accents (though that has its problems too), but it's not like
there was some American chauvinism that didn't bother to think about
other languages.

The other thing that pisses me off is people complaining that this or
that character is "the erase character" in ASCII, and complaining that
some system is using a different character.  ASCII has no erase
character (just as it has no newline character), and there is no "one
true character" for erase, any more than there is one true C brace
indenting style or one true endianness.

Thomas