2 ms·

I’m sure lots of people will think this, so I’ll say it— Box-drawing characters (U+2500–U+257F) are not ASCII (U+0000–U+007F). There, got it out of my system.

I’m sure lots of people will think this, so I’ll say it— Box-drawing characters (U+2500–U+257F) are not ASCII (U+0000–U+007F). There, got it out of my system. :-) (I know, “ASCII art” colloquially means more than just the ASCII range.)

guidedlight 1y ago
They sort of are. I think the confusion arises because the IBM PC ASCII (code page 437) included comprehensive box-drawing characters between hexidecimal character positions B3 and DA. These weren't adopted into Unicode in the same character positions, but the box-drawing characters were definitely part of the commonly understood ASCII character set. But I think that this ASCII tree editor should have a toggle option for basic vs extended ASCII, by utilising +, -, and | characters.
- chrismorgan 1y ago
  ASCII is a 7-bit encoding. That’s it. Honestly I’m not even convinced it’s entirely fair to call code page 437 a superset of ASCII, with how it repurposes the control codes 0x01–0x1F and 0x7F. (Superset of printable ASCII, definitely. It just feels not quite right to call it a superset of ASCII as a whole, though it is generally considered so.) (And I can’t find any references to code page 437 being called “IBM PC ASCII”.)
novoreorx 1y ago
My understanding of ASCII was influenced by tools like ASCIIDraw and ASCIIFlow, which I used them like almost 10 years ago. Inside my mind there's a voice with the same opinion of yours, but I still quite used to call plain-text drawings as "ASCII". LOL
Gormo 1y ago
> (I know, “ASCII art” colloquially means more than just the ASCII range.) I recall "ASCII art" always referring to art made with the 7-bit character set, and art made with the extended CP437 characters (and including color, etc.) always being called "ANSI art".
Timwi 1y ago
Indeed! I was disinclined to even look at this project because it said ASCII when the box-drawing characters are obviously a lot more suitable. It should say “text-only” or “plain-text” or similar instead.

guidedlight 1y ago

They sort of are. I think the confusion arises because the IBM PC ASCII (code page 437) included comprehensive box-drawing characters between hexidecimal character positions B3 and DA. These weren't adopted into Unicode in the same character positions, but the box-drawing characters were definitely part of the commonly understood ASCII character set. But I think that this ASCII tree editor should have a toggle option for basic vs extended ASCII, by utilising +, -, and | characters.

chrismorgan 1y ago
ASCII is a 7-bit encoding. That’s it. Honestly I’m not even convinced it’s entirely fair to call code page 437 a superset of ASCII, with how it repurposes the control codes 0x01–0x1F and 0x7F. (Superset of printable ASCII, definitely. It just feels not quite right to call it a superset of ASCII as a whole, though it is generally considered so.) (And I can’t find any references to code page 437 being called “IBM PC ASCII”.)

novoreorx 1y ago

My understanding of ASCII was influenced by tools like ASCIIDraw and ASCIIFlow, which I used them like almost 10 years ago. Inside my mind there's a voice with the same opinion of yours, but I still quite used to call plain-text drawings as "ASCII". LOL

Gormo 1y ago

> (I know, “ASCII art” colloquially means more than just the ASCII range.) I recall "ASCII art" always referring to art made with the 7-bit character set, and art made with the extended CP437 characters (and including color, etc.) always being called "ANSI art".

Timwi 1y ago

Indeed! I was disinclined to even look at this project because it said ASCII when the box-drawing characters are obviously a lot more suitable. It should say “text-only” or “plain-text” or similar instead.