On Thu, 21 Nov 2002, Axel C. Frinke wrote: > BO> with cp850 vs. cp437 you already lose the mixed double/single box drawing > BO> characters, but these aren't used as often as the non-mixed ones. > > I don't think so! Consider a programm which displays a table with > different box styles for 'inner' and 'outer' lines. Under cp850, the > 'junctions' will already look weird.
Sure, that's exactly what I said. Let me rephrase: cp850 does not have the mixed double/single box drawing characters, but cp437 has them. On the other hand there are many DOS programs who avoid those characters and only use the "single-only" or "double-only" boxes. And all of the DOS style codepages have at least those characters, at the expected places. > BO> So it is not so much the nature of text mode, but more an artifact of the > BO> direct-video approach. If all text mode apps would write using, say, ANSI > > I don't think this has to do with direct-video approach, but with the > assumption that cp437 ist active instead. > > BO> sequences (fast enough with NANSI.SYS) then the ANSI driver could do the > BO> translation. But the MSDOS ANSI.SYS was slow and not loaded by default so > > I don't think so. In text mode, every display of characters ends up in > a direct-video approach, regardless whether a program does this by > itself or uses INT 21h function calls. In text mode there is no way to > display mixed box chars under cp850! Sure, NANSI itself uses direct video access, but (N)ANSI.SYS could do a translation. This is what the Linux console does: its console driver first translates from the used character set to Unicode, and then maps the Unicode to the font used. So if you boot Linux using the codepage 437 font, then you can still use iso8859-1 as the character set without changing the font in the video hardware -- as long as there is an equivalent position of the iso8859-1 character in cp437. Boxes can also be drawn using VT100 sequences. This is impractical under DOS *because* so many programs use direct video access instead of the console driver. Bart ---------- list options/archives/etc.: http://www.topica.com/lists/fd-dev unsubscribe: send blank email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@mail-archive.com EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?bz8Rv5.bbRv4l.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
