[USMA:35401] Re: proper use of SI symbols in healthcare

[Remek Kocz]

Is it possible that the need for remaining backwards compatible with the old impact printers (the typewriter-like printers that are limited to a set of characers), so even if your software could do the job, you'd be limited by the capabilites of your output hardware?  This would be more of an issue with mainframe-centered environments, like a school district that I work at.  We frequently need to retain compatibility with devices that are rarely used by anyone else.  I don't know how modern the healthcare IT environment tends to be.

Since we're on the topic of IBM mainframes, they used a different form of character encoding called EBCDIC.  This was a set of characters very reminiscent of ASCII standard 1965 (it included both lowercase and uppercase along with symbols you'd find on a typical typewriter of the day), and it was cleary geared for the business end of things.  It was eventually expanded into Augmented EBCDIC, and it encompassed a whole variety of sombols, including the letter mu.

Remek