3 ms·
Ask HN: Why does macOS assume PC and PS/2 RTF encodings came from NeXT machines?
According to the RTF specification, \pc and \pca encodings specify the IBM 437 and IBM 850 code pages, respectively.
However, TextEdit and Pages both use the NeXT character set when rendering such files.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT_character_set
Example RTF code:
{\rtf1\pc\deff0
{\fonttbl\f0 Courier New;}
{\pard
\'c9\'cd\'cd\'cd\'cd\'bb \line
\'ba\~\~\~\~\'ba \line
\'ba\~\~\~\~\'ba \line
\'c8\'cd\'cd\'cd\'cd\'bc \line
\par}
}
This should create a box using curses-like line drawing characters. But on TextEdit and Pages, it does something else entirely using quotes and a superscript number 2.
Does anyone have any historical context?
Did NeXT machines do more word processing than IBM compatible machines at the time?
And why would this deviation from the standard continue today?
- spl757 4y agoMy guess is because NeXT was the company Jobs started when he left Apple in 1985 .
- sircastor 4y agoI agree with this. It is almost certainly historical - macOS (formerly Mac OS X) is a direct descendant of NeXTStep (OpenStep I believe) and inherited a bunch of codebase from it. I doubt it was explicitly set like that.
- ksherlock 4y agoIn 1997, NeXT purchased Apple for -$429 million and replaced MacOS 9 with NeXTSTEP.