*BSD News Article 17116


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From: mark@elea.umd.edu (Mark Sienkiewicz)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development
Subject: Re: 7bit unclean considered harmfull (was: Re: Need your opinion (TTYDEF ))8-bit clean state)
Date: 14 Jun 1993 15:43:16 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <1vi6ak$hs7@umd5.umd.edu>
References: <C8HpJK.71H@sugar.NeoSoft.COM> <1993Jun14.081754.18248@alf.uib.no>
NNTP-Posting-Host: elea.umd.edu

In article <1993Jun14.081754.18248@alf.uib.no> Bjorn_Asle.Valde@bergen.siodata.no writes:
>
>Huh...? For political reasons, IMHO, *all* and every driver/prog
>in any usable un*x like system should be 8bit-clean. If that's
>a problem, dump the device or rewrite the program that gives

Nobody said "Make the system 7 bit only."  You should make the system 
8 bit clean in such a way that it can still be set into a 7 bit mode.

For you to suggest that I should throw away hardware that works perfectly
fine just because _you_ don't like it is absurd.  It would make as much
sense for me to suggest that you throw away your keyboard because it
doesn't use 7 bit even parity.

>you a hard time. All now: it's 1993, 8-bit clean is the minimum
>requirement. (At least in principle, I'm not to rewrite all
>the old stuff, but as a matter of policy: yes!)

I have no problem with the idea that programs shouldn't blindly assume that
the 8th bit is 0, or available for use, or insignificant.  Just like you
would like that, I would like the system to not ASSUME there is meaning in
it.

Mark S.

p.s. Where is our 16 bit character support???? :)