C and ANSI standard (national character sets and ASCII)

[mrm at datagen.UUCP]

The ANSI committee is currently looking at the problem of alternate represent-
ations for the national characters (#, {, }, |, etc).  It will probably be
brought up and voted on in September's meeting in Boston.  It is unfortunate
that Ritchie used almost all available printing characters in the design of C.

Not only does the various national standard characters pose a problem, EBCDIC
also poses much the same problem, though worse since there are several
dilects, depenmding on the print train and/or terminal.

Michael Meissner
Data General Corporation
...{ allegra, ihpn4, rocky2 }!datagen!mrm