Coding systems are political (was Exended ASCII and code pages)

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz>:

> Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> And I thought that the Turing model was based on binary:
>
> It's not based on any particular encoding. When you define a
> Turing machine, you can pick any set of symbols you want for
> your alphabet. The model doesn't specify how they're
> represented.

A Turing machine is a model of a mathematician: you have a state
machine, an unlimited supply of blank sheets of paper, a pencil and an
eraser. The model was created to prove or disprove the mathematicians'
conviction that they could solve any given well-formed mathematical
problem.


Marko