Re: CHAR-BIT

[masinter.pa@Xerox.ARPA]

The control bit isn't the same as what ASCII calls "control". It cannot
be, since control-A and control-a are defined to be distinct, yet those
are the same in ASCII. 

Anything that purports to be a standard should avoid things of the
nature "implementations are free to ignore this".  It just leads to a
false sense of portability. If you have code that relies on the
Coke-Bottle feature, it won't run or be particularly meaningful in code
that doesn't have Coke-Bottles.  "Truthfully claim portability" is only
in name.

I think it makes sense to merge "bits" with "code" (since ASCII does
this anyway). Implementations that want to have more "bits" can define
them as extensions of the code space.

new:char-code-limit = (* old:char-code-limit old:char-bits-limit)
new:char-bits-limit = 1

(There's also a serious problems with fonts and font-numbers, and we've
abandoned them for Interlisp-D, but that's another story.)