You are correct. I have a mainframe right here in front of me, with a "test card" of all 256 byte values. There certainly are accented characters in most code p

You are correct. I have a mainframe right here in front of me, with a "test card" of all 256 byte values. There certainly are accented characters in most code pages. The problem is that they are difficult to deal with. They cause problems with data entry. They make sorting more complicated. They make searching difficult. etc etc. At my current site names are even stored in uppercase to reduce these issues. I welcome efforts like this to force computers to be more compatible with people - many mainframe systems are stuck in the dark ages of "to hard to be flexible" and need to be kicked into the 21st century.