On Tue, 1 Feb 2011 15:50:40 -0500, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) <shmuel+ibm-
[email protected]> wrote:
>
>I believe that he is running into a restriction in console processing.
>
>--
Correct.
WTOs, WTORs and WTLs have always been restricted to a subset of code-
page 037 character set 697. Specifically, the following characters:
A through Z
0 through 9
characters + * / , . & ( ) ' - = : " % < > ? ; and blank
Some additional code-points are not translated to blanks. Here is the complete
translate table:
x0 x1 x2 x3 x4 x5 x6 x7 x8 x9 xA xB xC xD xE xF
-------------------------------------------------
0x | 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 4C 6E ..............<>
1x | 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 ................
2x | 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 ................
3x | 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 ................
4x | 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 4A 4B 4C 4D 4E 4F ..........¢.<(+|
5x | 50 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 5A 5B 5C 5D 5E 5F &.........!$*);^
6x | 60 61 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 6B 6C 6D 6E 6F -/.........,%_>?
7x | 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 7A 7B 7C 7D 7E 7F ..........:#@'="
8x | 40 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 40 40 40 40 40 40 .abcdefghi......
9x | 40 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 40 40 40 40 40 40 .jklmnopqr......
Ax | 40 40 A2 A3 A4 A5 A6 A7 A8 A9 40 40 40 40 40 40 ..stuvwxyz......
Bx | 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 ................
Cx | 40 C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7 C8 C9 40 40 40 40 40 40 .ABCDEFGHI......
Dx | 40 D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 D6 D7 D8 D9 40 40 40 40 40 40 .JKLMNOPQR......
Ex | 40 40 E2 E3 E4 E5 E6 E7 E8 E9 40 40 40 40 40 40 ..STUVWXYZ......
Fx | F0 F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8 F9 40 40 40 40 40 40 0123456789......
The restriction is largely historical and due to shortcomings in early print
and
display hardware.
- Early printers (1403) did not support lower-case and other code-points due
to the impact printing technology in use at the time. Supporting lower-case
and additional codepoints significantly reduced printing speed, even when
those codepoints were not being used. At the time, SYSLOG went directly to
a printer, not a data set, so the system could be constrained to operate at
printer speed.
- Early display devices (2260, early 3270) did not support lower-case or other
code-points due to the additional circuitry that was required to store the
additional character images. Fast read-only memory was very expensive at
the time.
- Lower-case (and other) English code-points collided with the codepoints
used by the Japanese Katakana phonetic alphabet.
The first two restrictions have been dealt with by non-impact printing
technology and increases in circuit density and are no longer an issue. The
third restriction has been handled by incorporating the Katakana character set
into the double-byte Kanji character set. Katakana-only display devices have
ceased to exist.
While we have eased the restriction on the use of lower-case a through z
characters in messages, we have not removed the restriction on the use of
other code-points, although we have had a proposal to do so. The proposal
died due to a lack of formal customer requirements that we fix the problem.
W. Kevin Kelley -- IBM POK Lab -- z/OS Core Technical Development
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