Re: Transfer From IIgs to PC Successful--Read Please

[Mike Pfaiffer <mike@digitalcivilization.ca>]

Bryan Parkoff wrote:

> Transfer From IIgs to PC Successful--Read Please
<snip>
>     It is all done without through Macintosh.  Please explain why ASCII
> 128-256 may be different while binary is supposed to be unchanged.  Please
> advise.


	The quick response is the PC uses an extended ASCII. Most of the older 
machines including the Apple// series used a standard ASCII. Standard 
ASCII is 7 bits. The PC extends it's version of ASCII to 8 bits. The 
first 127 characters should remain unchanged from machine to machine.


	Here is the fun part... I understand the Mac also uses a font dependant 
extended ASCII as well. I don't use my Macs enough to be able to tell 
for certain.


	Having said all this, if you look in the various hardware reference books 
for the Apple//, you'll see sort of an extended ASCII on the hexadecimal 
level. What Apple did was shift the standard characters by moving them 
into the upper 128 bits. The lower 128 bits are used for flashing and 
inverse characters.

	To confuse matters... The higher level languages use standard ASCII 
(0-127) and treat the inverse and flashing characters as attributes. For 
the GS GUI (again I haven't worked with this enough to be sure), the 
ASCII is also extended and is probably font dependant. There are also 
various attributes available for the graphic fonts as well, but they 
would be stored as attributes and not part of the ASCII code.

				Later
				Mike



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