Re: Computerworld editorial: ASCII is better than EBCDIC

Vern,

You should write to him and/or the Computerworld editor and call him out on 
this.  :-)

 
Neil Palmer, Cambridge, Ontario, Canada
 
(This account not monitored for personal mail,
remove the last two letters before @ for that)


----- Original Message ----
From: "vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxx" <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 6:48:33 PM
Subject: Re: Computerworld editorial: ASCII is better than EBCDIC


Frank Hayes has, according to the article, "has covered IT for more than 20 
years." It seems he has not been around long enough to make the statement he 
does. And this very statement is patently ridiculous on the face of it::

ASCII. A big improvement over IBM’s proprietary EBCDIC character set in the 
1960s. But today we do business globally, and ASCII can’t even handle euro or 
yen signs.

Original ASCII came from telexes, my cohort across the aisle says, and was 
7-bit - plus various stop and parity stuff. EBCDIC is related to our favorite 
Hollerith cards. Who knows the whys and wherefores behind the design decisions. 
As to handling euro and yen, the writer seems not to know that there are 
several ASCII code pages. As to superiority, which one has more control codes? 
Of course, are they needed?

The statement seems more about acceptance than about true improvements. My 
cohort also said that IBM made EBCDIC public long ago. And the 2 systems were 
probably developed in parallel - different origins. This is just another 
unfortunate silly example of something that people will accept without 
examining it for credulity. And I am probably off the mark, but I hope not so 
bad as that writer!!

;-)
Vern

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: AGlauser@xxxxxxxxxxxx 

For those who are interested, I believe this is the article in question: 
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleI
 
d=269598