Re: [Ql-Users] Assembly language eComic, issue 7, out now!
On Thu, Oct 3, 2019 at 2:41 AM Norman Dunbar wrote: > Hi Dave, > > On 03/10/2019 00:58, Dave Park wrote: > Apparently, I am a pedant's baddest nightmare. :o) > worstest nightmare! :P ;) -- Dave Park d...@sinclairql.com ___ QL-Users Mailing List
Re: [Ql-Users] Assembly language eComic, issue 7, out now!
Hi Dave, On 03/10/2019 00:58, Dave Park wrote: I think we have to remember that people didn't communicate as easily or freely then as we do today, so specifications were far more localized than we'd suspect. If sites had 8 hole punched tape readers, it would be a sensible use. When modems came along, and a parity bit was part of the modem's protocol, it freed up that 8th bit. Lots of people hacking it to their own purposes. Someone with the luxury of a CRT going, "h, I can generate extra characters, graphical elements, all sorts!" and before you know it, ASCII evolves by who communicates the best ;) Fun times! You mean, standards! :o) I had a look over at Wikipedia yesterday (yes, I know) and you've basically summarised the whole tale of ASCII and how it got from a fledgling 6 bit to 7 where it lives now, with it's extra bit hanging on "just because". Fun times indeed. Apparently, I am a pedant's baddest nightmare. :o) Cheers, Norm -- Norman Dunbar Dunbar IT Consultants Ltd Registered address: 27a Lidget Hill Pudsey West Yorkshire United Kingdom LS28 7LG Company Number: 05132767 ___ QL-Users Mailing List
Re: [Ql-Users] Assembly language eComic, issue 7, out now!
I think we have to remember that people didn't communicate as easily or freely then as we do today, so specifications were far more localized than we'd suspect. If sites had 8 hole punched tape readers, it would be a sensible use. When modems came along, and a parity bit was part of the modem's protocol, it freed up that 8th bit. Lots of people hacking it to their own purposes. Someone with the luxury of a CRT going, "h, I can generate extra characters, graphical elements, all sorts!" and before you know it, ASCII evolves by who communicates the best ;) Fun times! dp On Wed, Oct 2, 2019 at 3:18 PM Norman Dunbar wrote: > Hi Dave, > > strangely enough, I read that the 8th bit allowed parity as, the then, top > notch paper tapes could cope with an extra (8th) bit and it was put to good > use for a parity bit. I haven't read the various standards though, so > willing to be corrected. (Again!) > > > Cheers, > Norm. > -- > Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. -- Dave Park d...@sinclairql.com ___ QL-Users Mailing List
Re: [Ql-Users] Assembly language eComic, issue 7, out now!
Hi Dave, strangely enough, I read that the 8th bit allowed parity as, the then, top notch paper tapes could cope with an extra (8th) bit and it was put to good use for a parity bit. I haven't read the various standards though, so willing to be corrected. (Again!) Cheers, Norm. -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. ___ QL-Users Mailing List
Re: [Ql-Users] Assembly language eComic, issue 7, out now!
On Wed, Oct 2, 2019 at 12:38 PM Norman Dunbar via Ql-Users < ql-users@lists.q-v-d.com> wrote: > Hi Marcel, > > yes, I agree ASCII is indeed 7 bit. I have to confess that since the > early eighties - at least where I've been working or at college - it has > been considered 8 bit with all those extra characters above $7F. But I > sit corrected. (I like pedantry!) > Then pedantry you shall get! ASCII uses 7 bits of an 8 bit field for data. The 8th bit was initially defined to be used as a parity bit. People don't read the X3.2 standard, and usually start with the X3.4 standard. Which used "up to" 8 bits for data. -- Dave Park d...@sinclairql.com ___ QL-Users Mailing List
Re: [Ql-Users] Assembly language eComic, issue 7, out now!
Hi Marcel,
yes, I agree ASCII is indeed 7 bit. I have to confess that since the
early eighties - at least where I've been working or at college - it has
been considered 8 bit with all those extra characters above $7F. But I
sit corrected. (I like pedantry!)
Do you mind if I use your feedback in the next issue please? Thanks (in
advance) if so.
Cheers,
Norm.
On 02/10/2019 10:49, Marcel Kilgus via Ql-Users wrote:
Norman Dunbar via Ql-Users wrote:
In this issue there is an article by Tobias on the Q68, plus
exciting stuff about the UTF8 character set encoding and how it can
be used on the QL - or at least, how I can use it! Two world class
(ahem!) utilities are supplied to enable conversion from the QL to
UTF8 and back again. There's even, wait for it, a table of contents! ;)
As a pedantic ass I have to object so sentences like these:
"• The UK Pound symbol is character 96 ($60) on the QL, but in ASCII
it is character 163 ($A3)" (etc.)"
ASCII is, by definition, 7-bit, so it cannot contain a character with
the number 163. The tale of characters 128-255 is one fought in many
battles. Linux tended to be "ISO 8859-1" and later "ISO 8859-15"
before they adopted UTF-8, on Windows you will mostly find the
"Windows-1252" encoding. These are very similar, but differ when it
comes to the Euro sign for example (ISO 8859-1 is too old to have a
Euro sign and the others have adopted it in different places).
But, and that is the important thing, Unicode was made to unify them
all. And UTF-8 is a pretty darn cool invention, unfortunately it came
too late for Windows, which was a very early adopter of Unicode at a
time when everybody thought "65536 characters ought to be enough for
everyone!". So Windows started to used 16-bits for every character
("UCS-2" encoding), which makes coding somewhat weird, and then they
found out that 65536 characters are not enough after all, so now
Windows uses UTF-16, which is UTF-8's big brother, with sometimes 2
bytes per character and sometimes 4. What a mess. But when it comes to
data storage UTF-8 is the way to go these days, always!
For QPC I already implemented these translations 20 years ago when
copying text to/from the clipboard. But well done for bringing UTF-8
to the QL :-)
Cheers, Marcel
___
QL-Users Mailing List
--
Norman Dunbar
Dunbar IT Consultants Ltd
Registered address:
27a Lidget Hill
Pudsey
West Yorkshire
United Kingdom
LS28 7LG
Company Number: 05132767
___
QL-Users Mailing List
Re: [Ql-Users] Assembly language eComic, issue 7, out now!
Norman Dunbar via Ql-Users wrote:
> In this issue there is an article by Tobias on the Q68, plus
> exciting stuff about the UTF8 character set encoding and how it can
> be used on the QL - or at least, how I can use it! Two world class
> (ahem!) utilities are supplied to enable conversion from the QL to
> UTF8 and back again. There's even, wait for it, a table of contents! ;)
As a pedantic ass I have to object so sentences like these:
"• The UK Pound symbol is character 96 ($60) on the QL, but in ASCII
it is character 163 ($A3)" (etc.)"
ASCII is, by definition, 7-bit, so it cannot contain a character with
the number 163. The tale of characters 128-255 is one fought in many
battles. Linux tended to be "ISO 8859-1" and later "ISO 8859-15"
before they adopted UTF-8, on Windows you will mostly find the
"Windows-1252" encoding. These are very similar, but differ when it
comes to the Euro sign for example (ISO 8859-1 is too old to have a
Euro sign and the others have adopted it in different places).
But, and that is the important thing, Unicode was made to unify them
all. And UTF-8 is a pretty darn cool invention, unfortunately it came
too late for Windows, which was a very early adopter of Unicode at a
time when everybody thought "65536 characters ought to be enough for
everyone!". So Windows started to used 16-bits for every character
("UCS-2" encoding), which makes coding somewhat weird, and then they
found out that 65536 characters are not enough after all, so now
Windows uses UTF-16, which is UTF-8's big brother, with sometimes 2
bytes per character and sometimes 4. What a mess. But when it comes to
data storage UTF-8 is the way to go these days, always!
For QPC I already implemented these translations 20 years ago when
copying text to/from the clipboard. But well done for bringing UTF-8
to the QL :-)
Cheers, Marcel
___
QL-Users Mailing List
Re: [Ql-Users] Assembly language eComic, issue 7, out now!
Hi Wolf. Thanks. I use eComic, eMagazine, ePeriodical etc interchangeably. My wife calls all magazines comics, so it sort of stuck. Cheers, Norm. -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. On 1 October 2019 06:46:03 BST, Wolf via Ql-Users wrote: >Hi Norman, > >as always an enjoyable read. > > >Wolfgang >Nb Why e"Comic"? >___ >QL-Users Mailing List ___ QL-Users Mailing List
Re: [Ql-Users] Assembly language eComic, issue 7, out now!
Hi Norman, as always an enjoyable read. Wolfgang Nb Why e"Comic"? ___ QL-Users Mailing List
Re: [Ql-Users] Assembly language eComic, issue 7, out now!
Oh hum. The URL got butchered. Try this one: https://github.com/NormanDunbar/QLAssemblyLanguageMagazine/releases/tag/Issue_7 and hopefully, that will work better. Sorry. Cherrs, Norm. On 30 September 2019 20:48:41 BST, Norman Dunbar via Ql-Users wrote: >Hello to all (both?) my faithful readers. The latest edition of the >somewhat irregular eComic about QL Assembly Language Programming is out >now. Get it from: > >https://github.com/NormanDunbar/QLAssem ... ag/Issue_7 > >You only need the PDF (to read) and the Code.zip file, to save you >typing. Enjoy. > >In this issue there is an article by Tobias on the Q68, plus exciting >stuff about the UTF8 character set encoding and how it can be used on >the QL - or at least, how I can use it! Two world class (ahem!) >utilities are supplied to enable conversion from the QL to UTF8 and >back again. There's even, wait for it, a table of contents! ;) > >Help yourselves and enjoy. > >Cheers, >Norm. >-- >Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. >___ >QL-Users Mailing List -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. ___ QL-Users Mailing List
[Ql-Users] Assembly language eComic, issue 7, out now!
Hello to all (both?) my faithful readers. The latest edition of the somewhat irregular eComic about QL Assembly Language Programming is out now. Get it from: https://github.com/NormanDunbar/QLAssem ... ag/Issue_7 You only need the PDF (to read) and the Code.zip file, to save you typing. Enjoy. In this issue there is an article by Tobias on the Q68, plus exciting stuff about the UTF8 character set encoding and how it can be used on the QL - or at least, how I can use it! Two world class (ahem!) utilities are supplied to enable conversion from the QL to UTF8 and back again. There's even, wait for it, a table of contents! ;) Help yourselves and enjoy. Cheers, Norm. -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. ___ QL-Users Mailing List
