Re: 8-bit encodings and ASCII (was: Unicode conformant character encodings and us-ascii)

From: Pim Blokland (pblokland@planet.nl)
Date: Sat May 17 2003 - 09:29:39 EDT

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    James Kass schreef:

    >> Now this is true, because the controls have double meanings (e.g.
    0x0D
    >> is both a carriage return and an eighth note).
    >
    > Is it? Isn't the eighth note simply a unique graphic used in the
    DOS
    > font to display a single glyph for 0x0D where appropriate?

    If it was, I presume they would have used a CR arrow for a picture
    in that position. And they could have used other "control pictures"
    for other codes below 0x20, such as a musical note for 0x07, etc.
    The fact that they didn't, shows they just wanted to expand the
    character set. That's why the pictures in those positions include
    pargraph signs, bullets etc.
    Besides, the original IBM PC BIOS had separate functions for those
    two functionalities - characters or control codes (i.e. some
    functions output an inverse white circle for a 0x0A, while others do
    a line feed).

    Pim Blokland

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