Re: Characters in range 128-159, incl.

Jon_Bosak@Novell.COM
Wed, 25 Jan 95 14:53:37 EST

Following up on Murray's excellent response to Stan's question, let me
emphasize that the problem with the characters in the range 128-159
has nothing to do with HTML. The problem is that those characters
simply *are not there* in many non-Windows environments (X Windows,
for example). The only solution to the problem is to avoid using
them.

The range 128-159 mirrors the range 0-31 in the seven-bit set and,
like 0-31, it is reserved for control characters. Microsoft merrily
ignores the relevant ISO specs and puts some extra characters in that
range for MS Windows. The extra characters would be nice to have
(despite the fact that no one outside Microsoft was consulted on which
would be the most useful ones to put there) except for the fact that
their placement interferes with all other applications that do observe
the standard. It's a nice study in miniature of the problems that are
caused when people start making cool ad hoc extensions without regard
to the larger environment.

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