Re: Shift-3, pounds (British) and pounds (octothorpes)

[Linards Ticmanis <ticmanis@coli.uni-sb.de>]

Ned Ludd wrote:

> Presumably it's like the Canadian model, which has both North American
> and European characters. If so, there is a rocker switch under the front
> bevel that selects the character set.
> AFAIK, it only affects the characters on the display, so using the
> European character set in a program or WP document won't necessarily
> translate on another computer (unless it is also in Euro mode).

That's true, the switching is completely invisible to software. On some
models, like the German "APPLE ��", the keyboard assignment is switched
too if you flip the switch.

The char assignments seem to be based on ISO 646, a 7 bit standard which
preceeded today's 8-bit ISO 8859-X charsets, so it won't work with newer
software. ISO 646 was sort of standard on CP/M systems though, the
Commodore 128 uses it too in its nationalized versions.

(Why Apple ��? The German one replaces the brackets and braces with
Umlauts. Thus the startup of the non-enhanced //e says APPLE ��. The
Standard Applesoft prompt is � instead of ]. Looks pretty sick if you
ask me.)

-- 

Linards Ticmanis

 The Master said, "The business of laying on the colors follows the
preparation of the plain ground."