Re: [TIP] Get rid of the `foo' eyesore

[Jesper Harder]

"Stefan Monnier" <monnier+gnu.emacs.help/news/@flint.cs.yale.edu> writes:

>> Because ISO-8859-1 (et al.) clearly defines the code point as a grave
>> accent.
>
> Now why on earth would anybody want a `grave-accent' character
> if you don't have the notion of character-composition with it ?

Well, I suppose you could just use <BS>: è = `e -- which would
probably work fine on a teletype.  Why else would there be
diacriticals in ASCII?

At least that's the historical explanation suggested by:

,----[ http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/latin1/ascii-hist.html#60 ]
|
| It appears to have been at their May 13-15, 1963 meeting that the
| CCITT decided that the proposed ISO 7-bit code standard would be
| suitable for their needs if a lower case alphabet and five diacritical
| marks, including the grave accent, were added to it.
| 
| At the October 29-31 meeting, then, the ISO subcommittee altered the
| ISO draft to meet the CCITT requirements, replacing the up-arrow and
| left-arrow with diacriticals, adding diacritical meanings to the
| apostrophe and quotation mark, and making the number sign a dual for
| the tilde.
`----