Subject: Pure GB, etc

From: Jianxun Ding <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 91 18:09:15 CST

There have been some misunderstandings in the `pure GB' and the `popular GB'
discussions.  In fact,  GB 2312 just defines the coding of the 14 bits.
Together with the two "first" bits,  it can be used as G0, G1, G2,
and G3 sets with four unique ESC sequences.  So using 01, 10 or 11 in the
two "first" bits does not mean violating the GB coding.  The CCDOS method
is actually using the G3 set without the standard ESC sequence.

Owing to the practical computer market situation and the low efficiency of
using standard ESC sequences,  people tend to forget every code set has
a unique ESC sequence.  If all the machines and applications had used
some mechanisms to recognize different ESC sequences, we would not have had
all these problems.  However,  their speed would be much lower if they use
various code sets frequently.

As a special case,  for the computer networking,  we have to compromise
with the market situation.  If all the network protocols strictly conform to
ISO/IEC OSI standards,  then all the transmitting messages will go through
the ASN.1 coding at the sender's side and the ASN.1 decoding at the receiver's
side.  All the current problem will be disappeared.  Of course, that will be
a long story.  Thus it is highly worthwhile to target the current problems of
the Chinese character transmission.

Jian-Xun Ding
Department of Computer Science
Texas A&M University

BTW,  Happy New Year!