Option +HighBITs
Option -HighBITs
This option affects the way that MAIL8 displays certain special characters on the terminal screen (for example, when displaying a message with the Print command).
Loosely speaking, MAIL8 displays normal characters "as is" and displays unusual characters with special escape sequences of the form \nnn (where nnn stands for three octal digits giving the numeric value of the unusual ASCII character). Normal characters include the plain upper and lower case letters, the digits, punctuation characters, and various spacing characters (the blank, the tab, and so on). All of these normal characters are stored in standard 9-bit bytes, and all of these normal characters have their 8th and 9th bits turned off.
With +HighBITs in effect, MAIL8 displays all normal characters as is, plus all characters which consist of a normal character plus the 8th and/or 9th bit turned on. Such characters are often common characters in non-English languages; for example, accented letters may be represented as a normal letter with its 8th and/or 9th bit turned on. If you have a monitor that can display such special letters, +HighBITs ensures that they are shown in a readable way, instead of using \nnn escape sequences.
With -HighBITs in effect, MAIL8 displays characters with their 8th and/or 9th bits turned on as escape sequences. This is helpful if your monitor cannot display such special characters in a readable way; at least the escape sequence tells you that there's a character there.
The MAIL8 administrator at each site may decide whether the site default should be +HighBITs or -HighBITs. Individual users can use the Option command to change the setting if they don't like the default.
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