ASCII and character fonts.

[tastefulmrship]

From the BB4CPC thread;

I started such an ASCII topic (CPCwiki discussions section) in hope someone would do a properly linked and categorized page on the wiki on the matter...

As I told there, I simply couldn't find a proper page concerning the letters, characters and ASCII in general from the CPC/Wiki point of view.

But this topic highlighted the importance of such non-existing page also from the Cat'art point of view... and the importance of the different country's ROM that have to be taken into account when you design such ASCII art Cat'arts...

CatArtSCIIs ?
lol

Well, here's the character I use from the ROM supplied with WinAPE 2A18. It shows characters 032-127.

[Click thumbnail to view full image)


Does anyone have access to real hardware to compare 032-127 across the differing ROM sets?
And I always thought ASCII was a standard; the 'S' part of the acronym!

[voXfReaX]

Hi,


Find attached the two screenshots in which the first 127 chars are displayed in a FR-based CPC and an UK-based one respectively.
For your convenience, the differences between the two ROMs occur in the following chars:

-64,
-92,
-94,
-123,
-124,
-125.


Hope I helped!
I am waiting for a Spanish ROM comparison as well... (Syx? MiguelSky? )
voxy


EDIT: I installed the Spanish ROM, found in Grimware, in WinAPE and checked if there any differences between the chars of the Spanish ROM and the UK-based one... I couldn't find any! But perhaps a confirmation post is welcome from the Spanish people

[tastefulmrship]

Oooh... big problems there, then!
"@" "\" and "|" are used a lot in ASCII art.

094 is actually 160 in the UK ROM. (I had to manually change my entire .txt file for the LUMUCHAN ASCII-Art as "^" looks better than "↑")


I had forgotten that other languages use accents on vowels! (ignorant Brit... well, ignorant Paddy living in Britain)

[voXfReaX]

Oooh... big problems there, then!
"@" "\" and "|" are used a lot in ASCII art.

I know man! I was so disappointed when I found out that my CATart wasn't displayed properly on French CPCs... I had to do a lot of modifications, and with the great support and guidance of Supersly, I manage to show something which is "almost" like my very-first ASCII design (the "almost" word depends on how is defined over different persons, that's why it's inside quotes!)

   

I had forgotten that other languages use accents on vowels! (ignorant Brit... well, ignorant Paddy living in Britain)

Imagine if there was a Greek ROM existing as well! We should be grateful that the only chars' differences found are only between the FR and the rest-based ROMs

[MiguelSky]

The Spanish ROM let the English characters to 127 as are. Capture from CPCE:

[tastefulmrship]

So, do the \, | and @ characters exist somewhere else in the character set? I've looked through 128-255 and it seems to be graphics and Greek alphabet only on UK ROM set. No space available for accented vowels, which means no obvious space for the missing ASCII characters on the French ROM set.

[voXfReaX]

So, do the \, | and @ characters exist somewhere else in the character set? I've looked through 128-255 and it seems to be graphics and Greek alphabet only on UK ROM set. No space available for accented vowels, which means no obvious space for the missing ASCII characters on the French ROM set.

If you are not working on a CATart, I would advise you the following:
1/ Replace all "\" (char92) with char205;
2/ Replace all "/" (char47) with char204;
  (char47 is not different between FR and the rest but this suggestion is made in order to keep a higher lever of coherence)
3/ Replace all "|" (char124) with char149;
4/ Replace all "@" (char64) with char164 (just a suggestion in this one...)


This way you will keep "almost" as you already have your ASCII art screens, but these changes cannot work on a CATart task, as we are restricted to the first 128 chars!


See you,
voxy

[tastefulmrship]

If you are not working on a CATart, I would advise you the following:
1/ Replace all "\" (char92) with char205;
2/ Replace all "/" (char47) with char204;
  (char47 is not different between FR and the rest but this suggestion is made in order to keep a higher lever of coherence)
3/ Replace all "|" (char124) with char149;
4/ Replace all "@" (char64) with char164 (just a suggestion in this one...)

Ooooh... so those actual characters do not exist within 128-255? That's not good. I wonder why they did that?
What happens when you hit the "\", "@" or "|" keys on the AZERTY keyboard?

[voXfReaX]

Ooooh... so those actual characters do not exist within 128-255? That's not good. I wonder why they did that?
What happens when you hit the "\", "@" or "|" keys on the AZERTY keyboard?

Ooooh... so those actual characters do not exist within 128-255? That's not good. I wonder why they did that?
What happens when you hit the "\", "@" or "|" keys on the AZERTY keyboard?

No clue why they did that... I guess the French guys will be more capable than me in answering this question!
You can compare between the two screenshots and find out how the "/", "@" and "|" are appearing in an AZERTY keyboard!
But as I've written to you before, the proposed solution in my previous post can only help you if you are not working in a CATart!
(I attach the screenshots here as well, since this damned McDeath moved our conversation to another place )

[Bryce]

I use a french CPC, you get the letter "ù" when you type |, but it still works as expected, so typing ùB swaps to drive B: just like |B would.

Bryce.

[tastefulmrship]

Thanks to the both of you for clearing that up for me. I've seen references to ùSTK and ùA, but never knew exactly what that meant!

I have a font program that converts ASCII text to a 40-column MODE 0 font. This is going to fun for any French users that get their hands on it, as those characters will look different on the screen... also, it presently only works for 32-127, so any characters beyond that (160, 164, 204, 205) will be ignored. Maybe I should consider including them and pointing them to the UK ASCII set.

[Bryce]

I probably should have mentioned: The key on the French Keyboard also has "ù" written on it. There is a key with "|" too, but that won't work for RSXs.

Bryce.

[tastefulmrship]

There is a key with "|" too, but that won't work for RSXs.

What character (number) is PRINTed when you press that key?

[MacDeath]

Believe it or not...

In french the "ù" is actually used in only one word !


où... which means Where.


And this shitty "letter+accent" do have it's own key... WTF ?


French keybnoard is completely screwed up concerning the thing we call "logic" (must be a discrete logic...)


I found out the Spanish keyboard is quite betterly concieved concerning the "accents" managements.
The only fault being the Ñ key... (lol)

in france we have no way to add the é accent where we want, it exist already done with é, so we can't spell some foreigner word using this accent on other letters...

the same with ç (only on ç),

è on è and à and ù of course... but we also have a proper accent : ò...
So why do we have those freaking special keys ? for ù, è, à

on the other hand we have some proper ¨¨¨ (ï öäëÿ....) ^^^ (êâôîû) a and ~~~~ (ñõ...)

[MiguelSky]

The only fault being the Ñ key... (lol)

The Spanish keyboard only changes the key numbers for some keys to fit the Ñ one (* + : ;...) but it respect the ASCII numbers from the English version.

[Morn]

Well, thank God that Schneider kept the keyboard layout and character bitmaps as they are! Everything else just sounds a bit messy to me.

[TotO]

I'm happy to buy my CPC on 1986... I got a nice QWERTY keyboard without useless french accents on it.
Others problems come with it. Numbers need to press SHIFT to get it.
So, some games don't start when reading the keyboard entry.

[voXfReaX]

Others problems come with it. Numbers need to press SHIFT to get it.
So, some games don't start when reading the keyboard entry.

Indeed, pressing Shift+number to get the number printed is a bit awkward!
But most curious is the fact that some games couldn't even boot... Really? Can you provide us with an example, if it's easy of course?


@tastefulmrship: Did you manage to correct your ascii screens? Let me know!

[TotO]

Indeed, pressing Shift+number to get the number printed is a bit awkward!
But most curious is the fact that some games couldn't even boot... Really? Can you provide us with an example, if it's easy of course?

Not speaking about booting a program but starting a game from a menu by choosing 1 or 2 players, ... Because SHIFT+NUMBER don't work.

[tastefulmrship]

Attached!!! (sory the size in 7z would be the half )
For each font there is a png and the font in raw mode 2

I forgot to mention that CPC-Rulez have a pretty decent collection of 8-bit fonts to download.
http://cpcrulez.fr/applications_graphic_stuff.htm

[Gryzor]

I forgot to mention that CPC-Rulez have a pretty decent collection of 8-bit fonts to download.
http://cpcrulez.fr/applications_graphic_stuff.htm

Anything good for the cpcwiki logo in there?

[TotO]

Grim already done a goodjob for that; Nop ?

[Gryzor]

You mean the disk-logo? Still needs a proper font

[TotO]

The font used on the logos in signature of tastefulmrship.[size=0.85em][/size]

[tastefulmrship]

The font used on the logos in signature of tastefulmrship.

You mean these pretty babies down here!


EDIT: The winners of any vote... cos I'll make numerous 'alt' accounts and vote for HoH! (Then delete the alt accounts once voting has finished. I don't want to over-populate the forums with too many fakies!)