8-Bit ASCII Standard on UNIX-POSIX

[Guy Harris]

From: guy at Sun.COM (Guy Harris)

> To possibly add to the list, this sounds like the character set
> Microsoft Windows uses and terms (by no standard I know of) "ANSI".
> It has the vowels in acute, grave, circumflex, tilde, and umlaut.
> The high bit characters also include cent, pound, yen, and universal
> currency symbols, circle-R trademark and circle-C copyright symbols,
> inverted ? and !, section and paragraph symbols, << guillemets >>,
> several accents, 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 characters, and superscripted 1, 2,
> and 3.  The last sound like a bad idea to me, so I actually hope this
> is something they threw together themselves.

> Sound like ISO 8859?

Yes.  The superscripted letters *do* come from ISO 8859 (see below).

> What I would also like to see is the ASCII 0..1F (31 dec.) graphic
> representations on new machines conform to the ANSI standard.  They
> might look impractical, but after setting up a font using them on my
> micro, it's amazing how much sense they make to me.

What "graphic representations" are you referring to?  The only ANSI standard I
know of for characters in the range 0x00 to 0x1f is ASCII, which says they're
*control* characters, not *printable* characters.

For your collective amusement, here is a chart of ISO 8859/1 or "ISO Latin
Alphabet #1".  This was derived by some quick hacking on the X11 include file
"keysymdef.h" - yes, X11 uses the ISO character sets as well.

non-breaking space		0xa0
inverted exclamation point	0xa1
cent sign			0xa2
pounds sterling			0xa3
"currency symbol"		0xa4
yen				0xa5
broken bar			0xa6
section mark			0xa7
diaeresis			0xa8
copyright			0xa9
feminine ordinal		0xaa
		(this is a subscripted lower-case "a", underlined)
left guillemot			0xab
		(French left quote, looks like small "<<")
not sign			0xac
hyphen				0xad
registered trademark		0xae
macron				0xaf
		(an elevated small horizontal bar)
degree symbol			0xb0
plus/minus			0xb1
superscript 2			0xb2
superscript 3			0xb3
acute accent			0xb4
mu				0xb5
paragraph symbol		0xb6
small centered dot		0xb7
cedilla				0xb8
superscript 1			0xb9
masculine ordinal		0xba
		(this is a subscripted lower-case "o", underlined)
right guillemot			0xbb
		(French right quote, looks like small ">>")
1/4				0xbc
1/2				0xbd
3/4				0xbe
inverted question mark		0xbf
A with grave accent		0xc0
A with acute accent		0xc1
A with circumflex accent	0xc2
A with tilde			0xc3
A with diaeresis		0xc4
A with ring			0xc5
		(as in "Angstrom")
AE dipthong			0xc6
C with cedilla			0xc7
E with grave accent		0xc8
E with acute accent		0xc9
E with circumflex accent	0xca
E with diaeresis		0xcb
I with grave accent		0xcc
I with acute accent		0xcd
I with circumflex accent	0xce
I with diaeresis		0xcf
upper-case eth			0xd0
		(eth is an Icelandic letter)
N with tilde			0xd1
O with grave accent		0xd2
O with acute accent		0xd3
O with circumflex accent	0xd4
O with tilde			0xd5
O with diaeresis		0xd6
multiply sign			0xd7
O with slash			0xd8
U with grave accent		0xd9
U with acute accent		0xda
U with circumflex accent	0xdb
U with diaeresis		0xdc
Y with acute accent		0xdd
upper-case thorn		0xde
		(thorn is an Icelandic letter)
German double-s			0xdf
a with grave accent		0xe0
a with acute accent		0xe1
a with circumflex accent	0xe2
a with tilde			0xe3
a with diaeresis		0xe4
a with ring			0xe5
		(lower-case "A with ring")
ae dipthong			0xe6
c with cedilla			0xe7
e with grave accent		0xe8
e with acute accent		0xe9
e with circumflex accent	0xea
e with diaeresis		0xeb
i with grave accent		0xec
i with acute accent		0xed
i with circumflex accent	0xee
i with diaeresis		0xef
lower-case eth			0xf0
n with tilde			0xf1
o with grave accent		0xf2
o with acute accent		0xf3
o with circumflex accent	0xf4
o with tilde			0xf5
o with diaeresis		0xf6
division sign			0xf7
o with slash			0xf8
u with grave accent		0xf9
u with acute accent		0xfa
u with circumflex accent	0xfb
u with diaeresis		0xfc
y with acute accent		0xfd
lower-case thorn		0xfe
y with diaeresis		0xff

Volume-Number: Volume 13, Number 49