[tech] Re: Member Webpage and TLA

[Nick Bannon]

On Sun, Mar 14, 2004 at 10:08:56PM +0800, Matt Johnston wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 14, 2004 at 09:00:19PM +0800, Alastair Irvine wrote:
> > Are non-letter TLAs traditionally allowed?
> 
> In recent times yes. However, I believe the tradition came from when
> computers didn't have enough memory for full usernames, so the TLA used
> only 2 bytes of memory (or less?) or something. So I guess in that case
> non-letters might not have been allowed. I'm sure someone who's been
> around longer than me can explain.

That's right, Radix-40, which can pack three characters in 16 bits. I'm
not sure which system was relevant to the UCC, but there was a 16 bit
user ID field which could be used to map to a TLA.

Generally speaking, I don't think interoperability was high on the
priorities of the people using that sort of scheme, so you can pick any
character set you want. ::-)

http://www.byte.com/art/9612/sec4/art4.htm

The character set above lists:
 $.0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

Nick.

-- 
   Nick Bannon   | "I made this letter longer than usual because
nick-sig at rcpt.to | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal