X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f996b,4f3c981b56494d92 X-Google-Attributes: gidf996b,public From: Neil Franklin Subject: Re: Standard codes (out of topic !?) Date: 2000/02/15 Message-ID: <6un1p2jjbr.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 586272510 References: <883uu3$1he2$1@f1node01.rhrz.uni-bonn.de> <6uwvoa85y6.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> <8887dc$1lse$1@f1node01.rhrz.uni-bonn.de> X-Complaints-To: news@chonsp.franklin.ch X-Trace: 15 Feb 2000 21:36:24 +0100, dua131221.dialup800-stat.ethz.ch Organization: My own Private Self NNTP-Posting-Date: 15 Feb 2000 20:34:51 GMT Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art "Meph" writes: > Neil Franklin schrieb in im Newsbeitrag: 6uwvoa85y6. fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch... > > "Meph" writes: > > > > > > 1963 ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) > > > - specified as 7-bit code for telecommunication and data exchange > > > - 100 of 128 positions are used (only upper case) > > > > Prepend this with: U.S./AT&T Teletype code. Existant at least in 1953 > > (I have used a device built then). Had 64 printable characters (codes > > 32-95) identical with todays ASCII with a few substitution (no. 95 (_) > > was then a leftwards facing arrow, no. 94 (^) was an actual upwards > > facing arrow, possibly others I do not know of). > > Interesting, do you know where I can found a reference about this > code ? Well actually what I looked up was an old paper based one. Most likely out of print now. Apart from that alt.folklore.computers is the best source on such stuff. I have archived these discussions: http://neil.franklin.ch/Usenet/alt.folklore.computers/19971216_Old_ASCII_FS_GS_RS_etc http://neil.franklin.ch/Usenet/alt.folklore.computers/19981111_ASCII http://neil.franklin.ch/Usenet/alt.folklore.computers/19990907_1963_version_of_ASCII http://neil.franklin.ch/Usenet/alt.folklore.computers/19991031_The_history_of_ascii > I'm not sure about the following... > I have read something about a (not standardized) code called FIELDATA (1957?). > It was developed by the US Army and one of his developers worked later > on the ASCII. Therefore FIELDATA might have had influenced the ASCII !? According to 19990907_1963_version_of_ASCII the ASCII Esc (27) code is a legacy of Fieldata. > > > 1981 IBM Codepage 437 > > > - IBM uses the 8 bit and extended the code to 256 positions > > > > 8 bit, but neither a predecessor to ISO-8859 (that is why DOS texts > > make such a mess on Usenet), nor the first 8bit code. The honour of > > both of those goes AFAIK to an DEC character set from the mid/late > > 1970s (VT52 or VT100 terminal character set). > > Where would you sort the Codepage 437 in ? Parallel development. > > > (it exists no code called ANSI !) > > > > The name ANSI properly refers to a set of terminal control codes > > (function key reporting, cursor positioning, font switsching etc) > > derived from the DEC VT100 terminal code. > > > > What is today often misscalled ANSI is the PC/MS-DOS character set, > > which is actually pure IBM Codepage 437. > > I think Microsofts curious usage of the the word 'ANSI' is the reason > for this problem. Actually this one for once is not even Microsofts fault. Wow! Their uses of the term ANSI was in the ANSI.SYS driver, that replaced the standard MS-DOS "glass teletype" screen driver with an ANSI terminal. How and who the started calling the character set ANSI I do not know. But I doubt that to have been Microsoft (its not done so in their official docs). -- Neil Franklin, neil@franklin.ch.remove http://neil.franklin.ch/ Nerd, Geek, Hacker, Unix Wizzard, Sysadmin, Roleplayer, Mystic Computer: a toy, speeds work so that you have more time to play