long-char, kanji

[David A. Moon <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>]

    Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1986  11:16 EDT
    From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>

    Suppose we were to change the standard to eliminate the Bit and Font
    fields in characters.  (Such fields, along with other attributes such as
    "style", would be allowed as extensions, but Char-Bit and Char-Font would
    no longer be part of the standard language.)  Would anyone be screwed by
    this?  Would anyone even be unhappy about it?

Symbolics uses CHAR-BITS and does not use CHAR-FONT.  Since I don't see
how a portable program could ever use CHAR-BITS, whose actual meaning is
not defined by the language standard, I don't think it would hurt our
users if CHAR-BITS were a language extension instead of a part of the
standard language.  The important thing is for the standard language to
recognize that CHAR-CODE is not the only possible field, and provide the
appropriate abstractions for dealing with characters in this light (for
the most part, it does so now).

I think you will find that there are some other implementations that do
use CHAR-FONT, but I'll let them speak for themselves, if they wish to
say anything.