Re: CCSID (I think) problem

Hello Vernon,

You wrote:
>Not translated, yes. But the codepage tells how a code point will be
>handled at a display of print, right?  So QCHRID seems to explain why
>the same codepoint is displayed differently on the 2 systems.

It explains why a given code-point represents a different character but
if the file CCSIDs were set correctly you should see the same character
on both machines which is the whole point of CCSID support.  (There are
some instances where that will not happen but in most cases it behaves as
expected.)

>Aren't we saying the same thing?

Not at all.  You said the CHRID is the problem.  It's not.  The problem
is the 65535 CCSID.  The different CHRID is more of a symptom than the
problem.

>BTW, our code pages don't agree <g> the 'cent' sign showed up as some
>kind of accented 'o'!

No surprise.  I am using OS/2 Warp and you're not.  Your mail arrived
here with the accented 'o' and it was present in your latest reply.  If I
look at the raw e-mail data with a text editor I see a 3/4 symbol yet my
e-mail editor shows the accented 'o'.  Hmmm ....

My default codepage is 850 with a secondary codepage of 437.  If I view
your raw e-mail in 850 I see the 3/4 symbol.  If I view it in 437 I see a
less-than-or-equal-to symbol.  Since you are running a dialect of WinDOS
you are probably running codepage 1252.  As I understand it e-mail is
supposed to be sent in 7-bit ASCII (437) or quoted-printable (also 437)
so your e-mail system should be translating from 1252 to 437 before
sending and mine should be translating from 437 to 850.  Someone is
stuffing it up and I know where I'd put my money .... and it ain't on
OS/2.

However there are indications that many conversions are occurring during
the mail process.  For example, from your e-mail:

X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by linux.midrange.com
X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by
buck.hyperlink.net.au

thus the 'cent' character could be getting corrupted at many stages on
the way from you to me.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
   FlyByNight Software         AS/400 Technical Specialists
   http://www.flybynight.com.au/

   Phone: +61 3 9419 0175   Mobile: +61 0411 091 400        /"\
   Fax:   +61 3 9419 0175   mailto: shc@flybynight.com.au   \ /
                                                             X
                 ASCII Ribbon campaign against HTML E-Mail  / \
--------------------------------------------------------------------