Let me do "Steve's Guide to Hexadecimal" to so no one else on this list
falls asleep over too many misunderstood words. Those how have been
working in Hex for years, please skip this. Others, you may find this
interesting.
Hexadecimal -- comes from the latin "Hexa" for sixteen and "decimal"
meaning number.
English and most of the western and eastern world works off a base 10
system. "Base" in this case means how many symbols are used to
represent a number. We use base 10 since this is how many fingers and
thumbs we have. This is why we call a single symbol for a number a
digit and that word "digit" is also an anatomy term for a finger or
thumb.
Digital (there is that word again!) computers are most economically
based off a binary number system. That is base 2. The most common
symbols for a base 2 number system is "0" and "1". This number
represents something going on or off. Early computers it was mechanical
switches, then vacuum tubes and now, for the past 40 years, transistors.
In the early computer science days, there have been different ways to
represent computer memory in the quickest and most convenient manner.
It has been shown that displaying numbers in base 10 to the user is most
understood. However, 10 is not a multiple of 2 and thus more code
needed to be written for proper representation. Note: This is how
printf() came about. To show numbers quicker and not have a sheet of
paper with 0's and 1's all over it, most systems spit out numbers on
base 16. That is a multiple of two and takes less code for the symbols
to be created. This conserved paper for printing and was quicker than
printf().
Thus technical pros in the computer business work in hexadecimal. An
example of it is below.
HEX Base 10
0 0
1 1
2 2
3 3
4 4
5 5
6 6
7 7
8 8
9 9
A 10
B 11
C 12
D 13
E 14
F 15
10 16
11 17
For further threads, I highly recommend
newsgroup:alt.folklore.computers. Many well knowledged individuals that
knows the history of this business very well that hang on that
newsgroup.
Hope that answers more questions than it creates!
Steve
Richard Hartman wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Jeannine B. Leggieri [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>
> >
> > This is in regards to the email message that I sent out last
> > week asking if
> > anyone knew where I could find out about 0xFFFF and 0xFF. I
> > know that in
> > writing HTML code there are such hexidecimals for colors,
> > such as FFFFFF
> > (which is white) and 000000 (which is black), and there is a
> > page that would
> > tell the person what color it was referring to, such as the
> > HTML color code
> > chart. I am trying to locate such a chart in Palm
> > development, but I cannot
> > find anything like that anywhere. I was wondering if anyone
> > could advise me
> > as to where I may go to find help on this. Any good books
> > because it does
> > not seem like there is such a page with the code chart? I
> > know that it works
> > differently in Palm development and that they do not
> > represent colors, but
> > numbers. It would be helpful if I knew the coding and how it
> > is used. Can
> > someone please help? Thanks.
> >
>
> Hmmm... where to start ...
>
> Numbers is numbers. In base 16 (hexadecimal) or base 10
> (good ol' human-friendly decimal) numbers is numbers.
>
> What they mean depends upon context. When you are talking
> about colors, numbers frequently refer to mixing levels of '
> Red, Green & Blue -- thus 000000 is 00 Red, 00 Green, 00 Blue;
> which is the absence of all color: hence black.
>
> When discussing computer CPUs, numbers frequently represent
> instructions such as MUL, ADD, MOV -- each instruction has
> a numeric value, and the numeric value representing a MOV
> instruction is likely to be different for a Pentium (Wintel)
> than it is for a Dragonball (Palm).
>
> But bear in mind that the -only- thing that computers understand
> is numbers. These characters I am typing are -also- represented
> by numbers. The letter 'A' for instance has the numeric value
> of 65 (... in decimal, $41 in hex).
>
> Towards the end of your question you seem to imply that what
> you are after is information on how to program the Palm. That
> is a completely different question that what you started out
> asking ... and I wish I could be certain that that is what you
> really want to know ... generally you don't program in the
> machine language (i.e. numbers), so give your initial question
> I am still not certain what information you are really after.
>
> Hexidecimal, display color coding, programming ... your questions
> are really all over the place ... perhaps because you are trying
> to interpret what you think you know too much into the questions
> you are asking.
>
> Please, describe your situation and what you want to do. Do you
> have a program and you want to decode it's data files? Do you
> want to use display codes to display underlined or bold characters?
> Do you want to learn how to write programs? Or what?
>
> --
> -Richard M. Hartman
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> 186,000 mi./sec ... not just a good idea, it's the LAW!
