Hello Michiel,

HD>>>> At this moment I donot like the UTF 8 circus.

MvdV> "Onbekend maakt onbemind".

That's not the problem, but that it does not work at my favorite machine,
and every so x-time changing machines and OS, also take much energy not
everyone has. So I do that as less as possible.

HD>> The complex use of apostrophes etc is only a way to distinguish from
HD>> other languages, and nothing more.

MvdV> While in some languagas the use of accents, umlauts, tremas and other
MvdV> diacritics may be purely cosmetic in some cases, in others they are
MvdV> essential to properly convey the meaning or indicate the pronunciation.

MvdV> In Dutch the accents and tremas are essential.

You can often read that from the context, so accents not always necessarry.
Many people use them in the wrong way too, or do not use them at all.

MvdV> "Een" and "‚‚n" mean different things.

You can write e'e'n in stead, no special apostrophes needed ;-).

MvdV> "Roel" and "Ro‰l" are not the same person.

You can write Ro"el, no special apostrophes needed ;-).
At the basis school I learned that the trema means a split before the character
it is placed on. So Ro"el is correct and Roe"l is wrong.
Other point is the points on the i with a trema.
There should be three of them not two,
because the letter i already has one of its own.
The trema is an extra 2 points, so in total 3.
A good typewriter does this write well, i.e. which all the three points.
That's why I am allways talking about the Point(s) on the i ;-).
The Duth "y with dots are mostly spelled as two characters "ij" the same for
other miltiple vowels in words. No need for a single character ij.
In Germany they do the same by placing a letter e behind vowels with an Umlaut,
nothing wrong with that.

MvdV> And than of course there are languages with a completely different
MvdV> alfabet, Greek and Russian come to mind.

That is a far from my bed show, I have not the energy for to learn.
In that way I had much respect of an old computerfriend who studied Thai
characters and made much effort in it at his Acorn RiscPC and IyonixPC
while he was above 70 years old. The reason whas his daughter in law.
He died last year at 80, I still mis him, as I knew him for more than 30 years
and also travelled together to England and Mortsel.BE several times.
He was also one of my last Points.

MvdV> Bj”rn is right. The 26 letters of the ASCII character set are not enough
MvdV> to properly express oneself in writing. Even for the Brittish it is not
MvdV> enough . No pound sign 'œ' in ASCII...

You can write UKP for it, no special sign needed ;-).

Mvdv>>> So what we have in common is that we have something we do not like.
HD>> Yes because not al my systems can display all kinds of code pages.
MvdV> The early computers were a step back.

Yes.

MvdV> My first typewriter had no problems with accents and tremas.

Mine the same.

MvdV> It even had a key for the Dutch concatenatd 'ij'.

I have never learned about that special character at schools.
I think it was something from before the 1960 ties.
We all learned to write it in two characters, the same as "ei", "oe", "ui" etc.
Many years after high school I heard about that special "y.

MvdV> My first computer was Upper case ASCII only.

My computer life started much better with the Acorn BBC in 1984,
one of the top home computers at that time.
Even the Mini's at work in 1980 (DataPoint55) had both upper and lowercase.
In 1983 I studied witch CP/M machines like the Exidy Sorcerer.

MvdV> But computers have evolved.

Yes, not every one will follow, we have here someone only writing in lc.
That's a choice others should also respect.

MvdV> Now my computer can do much more than that typewriter.

Yes, mines too.

HD>> I have at least 3 different ones.

HD> First I have the UniCorn BBS system at Dos 5 with CP437

MvdV> My memory may fail me, but IIRC even DOS 5 had the CHCP command to
MvdV> switch code pages.

I am aware of that.

MvdV> It came with at least a dozen. CP850 and CP866 included.

In the fido software you could choose for one at a time only.
Changing after every message was and still is almost undoable.
For the next message you had to leave all the programs, than change codepage,
en then start all programs up again, to see it in the correct way.
And after that you have to change it back again.
So I choosed for CP437 as the most messages with graphics around text were
written in that alphabet.
But originally writing in High ASCII was forbidden, but many (new) writers
still did it ;-(.
After some time I stopped complaining and press the next key if it is
unreadable here.
At my RISC OS Point 1 system I can change between IBM CP437, Latin 1 and also
all kind of rotated alphabeths from wich ROT13 is the best one known.

MvdV> For DOS there was also CYRILLIC.COM.

Even a far from my bed show I have not the energy for.

HD>> Second I have all the RISC OS machines (RiscPC's, Pi's) using Latin 1.

MvdV> An exotic OS that may or may not support UTF-8 and/or IPv6 in future ...

We'll see. It is much more userfriendly than Windows which all its geeks.
More is not allways better.
Many phones now use ARM hardware too.
When the cleaning up proces is more ready here, I go invest in new play tools
like a better Linux laptop and may be a smartphone too.
The Raspberry Pi 3B+ whith Raspbian Stretch Linux is a nice machine,
but to light for daily office work. For FidoNet it will do.
I often have to go to the library here to show YouTube films at their Win7
machines, and to print some letters. Since my last printer a Lexmark OC45 got
defect, I do not invest in inktjet printers anymore.

HD>> And third the Raspbian Stretch Linux at several other Raspberry Pi's.
HD>> The last one can both Latin 1 and UTF8 If I am right.

MvdV> So it does UTF-8...

yes.

HD>> When I collect some text from a website, I can only save that textfile
HD>> If I choose UTF8. Whith the Default Latin 1 the saving gives an error,
HD>> and won't save the textfile at all ;-(.

MvdV> Almost all websites are UTF-8 these days. So of course you will hve
MvdV> problems with saving it in Latin-1. Adapt or be left behind...

I had no choice, en luckily I can read that saved UTF8 text's at my Latin 1
RiscPC from an USB stick.

Greetings from Henri.

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