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   AMATEUR_RADIO      Ham radio for when Armageddon strikes      2,531 messages   

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   Message 1,904 of 2,531   
   mark lewis to Ed Vance   
   High ASCII Characters   
   18 Apr 18 08:31:14   
   
    On 2018 Apr 10 06:58:00, you wrote to Daryl Stout:   
      
    EV> I'm wondering if everyone sees the same thing that I see on my screen.   
    EV> Let Me know. Thanks.   
      
   the U+2345 stuff is UNICODE... it is not CP437 which you are used to... CP437   
   is being forcibly left in the dirt and everything is moving to UNICODE (aka   
   UTF-8)...   
      
   the reason you see the differences that you do is because those characters   
   that you used to make the band aide are not in the same location in UTF-8 as   
   they are in CP437... CP437 is derived from a byte, 8 bits... because of that,   
   CP437 is limited to only 256 characters... UTF-8 is four bytes, 32bits, and   
   has 1112064 code points... not characters... each code point can be a   
   character on its own or it can be combined with other code points to make   
   other characters...   
      
   an example would be something like the o with the rooftop (aka circumflex   
   SHIFT-6)... in CP437 you see it as ALT-147... in UTF-8 it is U+00F4... how you   
   would type that on your keyboard, i don't know... the old ALT codes we used to   
   use are going away and all the characters are moving /except/ for the letters   
   and basic symbols...   
      
   look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437   
      
   i hope you will see the majik... in the chart, you have the character (on   
   top), the unicode value (in the middle) and the alt value (on the bottom)...   
      
   eg:  “   
       00F4   
       147   
      
   i cannot use the ALT codes any more... now, on my linux, i have to use what is   
   known as "composing"... to make this character, i have to use my "compose key"   
   and then the two characters "o" and "^"... they are composed together to make   
   the final “ character... on my system, when reading these messages, i'm   
   forcing things into CP437 but these characters like this i see as two   
   characters... in this case, the tilde "~" and the capital "S"... i don't see   
   the "o" with the rooftop unless i switch to unicode instead of CP437...   
      
   eventually, all of these fancy things like the bandaid and frame characters   
   we're used to seeing in the old DOS CP437 world will be harder to do...   
   especially since much of it is simply being dropped and no one has yet created   
   a convertor to convert these characters to the UTF-8 equivelent... there are a   
   few BBSes doing this conversion in code so the old CP437 style screens can be   
   used... they are actually transmitting the UTF-8 characters instead of the   
   CP437 characters... it would be nice to have a conversion program that does   
   the same thing and converts the actual screens... the thing is, right now, i   
   don't know how that would affect the ANSI color and cursor positioning   
   codes... probably not but...   
      
   hope this helps... i still have to work really hard to wrap my head around   
   it...   
      
   )\/(ark   
      
   Always Mount a Scratch Monkey   
   Do you manage your own servers? If you are not running an IDS/IPS yer doin' it   
   wrong...   
   ... Don't get so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance.   
   ---   
    * Origin:  (1:3634/12.73)   

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