RE: ASCII def.

At 02:59 PM 12/4/98 -0700, Dean_Shwed@domain.elided wrote:
>Hi, ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
>It uses 8bits per character and can therefore be used to represent 256
>unique bit patterns.  Since there are fewer than 100 characters available
>in western languages, the majority of patterns are unused.  As the name
>implies this is  standard code that can be used to transmit data to all
>systems that accept this standard.

here is an important piece of ASCII related administrivia for the
readership:

ASCII originally was a 7bit character code with 128 possible characters
(not all of them displayable.) 8bit ASCII is an extension which is _not_
universially supported. digest readers sending in postings _must_ use 7bit
ASCII if they want their posting to reach the list. this is a list policy
which has been automatically enforced by majordomo ever since the move to
the new server.

richard

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