Many Hewlett-Packard peripherals can be configured for 7-bit operation
with one of the European language national substitution character sets.
These peripherals must be converted to 8-bit operation to access Native
Language Support (NLS) capability. NLS requires the use of 8-bit
character sets that include USASCII and native language characters.
NLS for western European languages is based on the ROMAN8 character set
in which the additional characters required are assigned to unique
values between 128 and 255. Eight bits are required to hold the value
of a ROMAN8 character. All the special European characters are
accessible in ROMAN8 without losing any of the USASCII characters.
The 7-bit national substitution sets do not offer a full complement of
characters. New characters replace existing ones. For example, in
FRANCAIS, the graphic symbol # is not available. In Spanish and French,
even the substitutions made are not sufficient to obtain all the
necessary new characters. The use of mute characters is required.
Mute characters provide a single graphic on the terminal screen or paper
for two bytes of storage and two keystrokes. For example, an e in
Spanish or French would be produced with an accent mark plus an e,
whereas ROMAN8 contains the e as a single character. In any one
language, the graphic symbols for other European countries are
not available at all. For example, a French user does not have
access to the necessary characters to properly address a letter
to someone in Germany. The ROMAN8 8-bit character set eliminates
these problems.
