💾 Archived View for thrig.me › blog › 2023 › 03 › 14 › ascii.gmi captured on 2023-09-28 at 16:25:37. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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..yaagg@gggg_....yagggg@ggy_...._aa@ggg@ag_......ag@gggg........agg@ggg, .a@@~~~~~~7@@,..a@@~~~~~~7@@w..y@@F~~~~~7@@w.....`~Z@@~~........`~Z@@~~. .a@/.......@@/..a@/......."P...a@@......."~`.......J@@............4@@... .a@w_______@@/..a@@______,,....a@@.................J@@............4@@... .a@@@@@@@@@@@/...4@@@@@@@@@y...a@@.................J@@............4@@... .a@/`.`.`.`@@/......`.`.``@@w..a@@.................J@@............4@@... .a@/.......@@/..yg_.......a@/..a@@.......yaw.......J@@............4@@... .a@/.......@@/..4@@ggygyga@@/..`@@gygygya@@......yga@@gy,.......yya@@yy, ."P`.......~P....`~PPPPPPP~`.....7PPPPPPP~.......7PPPPPP........"PPPPPP.
ASCII now means, or is beginning to mean, "anything textish". You can see this often in the discussion of games, e.g.
"... but not a good looking ascii roguelike (like cogmind, or brogue)"
-- someone, ircs://irc.libera.chat:6697/##roguelikedev, sometime (danger: actually a bridge to some Discord thing)
Here is the ascii Brogue they speak of:
The observant may notice symbols not part of ASCII (ß, Ω, etc). A young human once asked me what the "S" was. They were not very advanced in their study of German at the time.
If you call them on this usage, some will switch to defending "extended ASCII" by which they invariably mean the IBM PC character set. (Brogue uses Unicode.) One problem here is the many incompatible uses of the 8th bit, especially over in Eastern Europe, and regardless all of those extensions are not ASCII, just as rogue movement keys (hjklyubn) are not vi movement keys (hjkl). This gets into the complicated realm of identity; their logic may run along the lines of "(some flavor of) extended ASCII inherits from ASCII therefore (some flavor of) extended ASCII is-a-type-of ASCII just as white horse is-a-type-of horse". By this logic, neovim can be called ed, because neovim extends vim extends vi extends ex extends ed. A strict view of ASCII limits the term to include only the following.
0 nul 1 soh 2 stx 3 etx 4 eot 5 enq 6 ack 7 bel
8 bs 9 ht 10 lf 11 vt 12 ff 13 cr 14 so 15 si
16 dle 17 dc1 18 dc2 19 dc3 20 dc4 21 nak 22 syn 23 etb
24 can 25 em 26 sub 27 esc 28 fs 29 gs 30 rs 31 us
32 sp 33 ! 34 " 35 # 36 $ 37 % 38 & 39 '
40 ( 41 ) 42 * 43 + 44 , 45 - 46 . 47 /
48 0 49 1 50 2 51 3 52 4 53 5 54 6 55 7
56 8 57 9 58 : 59 ; 60 < 61 = 62 > 63 ?
64 @ 65 A 66 B 67 C 68 D 69 E 70 F 71 G
72 H 73 I 74 J 75 K 76 L 77 M 78 N 79 O
80 P 81 Q 82 R 83 S 84 T 85 U 86 V 87 W
88 X 89 Y 90 Z 91 [ 92 \ 93 ] 94 ^ 95 _
96 ` 97 a 98 b 99 c 100 d 101 e 102 f 103 g
104 h 105 i 106 j 107 k 108 l 109 m 110 n 111 o
112 p 113 q 114 r 115 s 116 t 117 u 118 v 119 w
120 x 121 y 122 z 123 { 124 | 125 } 126 ~ 127 del
http://man.openbsd.org/man7/ascii.7
Anything else? Not ASCII.
"Codepage 437 art editor" while more accurate is rather long and awkward (and what happens if one adds support for SHIFT_JIS? UTF-9?) so one might see why folks use something generic, ascii, which is close enough, short, fairly well known, and gets the job done, even if it does make the term ascii rather vague: anything a font file might contain? Could be anything! Mangling the language thusly is the nature of things:
"Studies in Words". C.S. Lewis. 1960.
tags #unicode #ascii
