High-Order ASCII Alphabet & Other Keyboard Edits

Rob Cozens rcozens at pon.net
Sun Dec 21 10:03:00 EST 2003


>>Rev will see the characters as numeric values and return the same 
>>list of numeric values; but will the first character always display 
>>as "Ù" and the last character as "ü" on all Rev platforms & all 
>>fonts?
>>
>>I checked the Rev Dictionary for "diacritical" but the three 
>>references (find, toLower, toUpper) weren't much help.
>
>If you mean, do you get the same glyph for each ascii number, then 
>no, not even between fonts on the same platform. If you look in any 
>font display program, you'll see the variations that occur in the 
>high-ascii ranges in different fonts (the old Mac KeyCaps app was 
>good for this.) And in dingbat and symbol fonts, even the low-ascii 
>glyphs are different.
>
>But you probably knew that, so maybe I don't understand what you're asking.

Jacque, et al:

I understand that different fonts will display different symbols for 
certain high-order characters, and that some fonts (eg: dingbat) 
don't display alphabetic characters at all; but I find it hard to 
understand how people programming applications that use high-order 
alphabetic characters can deal with the issue if "ü" evaluates to one 
value in, for example, Times and a different value in Courier.

I looked through some old programming texts to compare the ASCII 
high-order alphabet:

UCSD Pascal Handbook & Handbook of Microprocessors, Microcomputers, & 
Minicomputers:  ASCII table quits at 127

HC Script Language Guide (Courier font): 128-159, 203-205, 216-217, 
229-239, 241-244

Think Pascal Resource Utilities and Turbo Pascal for the Mac: 
128-159, 203-205, 216, [217-255 not defined]

From what I'm seeing, I want to extrapolate to conclude that 128-159, 
203-205, and 216, at the least, are used to designate the same 
high-order alphabetic characters in alphabetic fonts; but I'm still 
hoping someone can clarify this for me...and explain any differences 
on ANSI platforms.
-- 

Rob Cozens
CCW, Serendipity Software Company
http://www.oenolog.net/who.htm

"And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee."

from "The Triple Foole" by John Donne (1572-1631)


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