On Fri, 6 Apr 2012 05:54:43 +1000, "DonH" <
donlhu...@bigpond.com>
wrote:
>
># My reference to a "64 Character Set" is as displayed as Appendix C in book
>quoted above which was, incidentally, first published in 1981.
> This book, "Computer Programming in Basic" is an excellent book in many
>ways, and is in the Teach Yourself Books series, published by Hodder and
>Stoughton. (163 pgs)
> Authors: L.R.Carter, and E.Huzan. (ISBN: 0-340-32434-1)
> There have been many books on Basic and computers since, but this is one
>I often return to.
>
An unnecessary amplification ... <g>
The term "64 character set" applies less to any one specific encoding
scheme and more to the traditional, common, or basic collection of
printable characters made up of special characters ($, %, ?, ...),
numbers (1, 5, ...), and upper-case letters (A, B, C, ...) facilitated
by the various devices of the day. Including automated and mechanical
devices such as typewriters. It specifically excluded any control
characters.
Of course in order to facilitate these characters the device had to
employ an encoding scheme - some 'standardized', others 'one-off'
device specific. So you do occasionally see specific "64 character
set" encodings, but usually as a cross-reference comparing for example
the encoding of 'A' in Baudot, EBCIDIC, ASCII, and Morse.
In actual use most of the "64 character sets" contained more than 64
characters and more often less, and occasionally control characters
too. The character sets were also occasionally referred to as the
exact number of characters include, so you had "67 character sets",
"58 character sets", etc. It was actually the ASCII standard which
more or less 'finalized' the term to "64 character set". The ASCII
designers deliberately took all these common/basic characters and
placed them into the 3rd to the 6th sticks of their standard. (Sticks
are the 16 character groups, and 4 x 16 is 64.) Thus referring to a
"64 character set" when in fact the character set might contain more
or fewer than 64 characters is a retrograded definition.
Another place you may run across the term is in language
specifications. If you look at old documentation for FORTRAN and
BASIC, somewhere in fine print in the documentation it will say they
use the "64 character set" for its language specification. That is why
once upon a time LET, PRINT, and FILE was 'legal' - let, Print, and
file was not. For early C's you will see the documentation refer to a
"96 character set" (lower case and squiggly characters included <g>).
Such distinctions served a purpose back in the day, but now pretty
much just a distant memory for us geezers.
-ralph