breastle screen for HLA Adventure Need help designing one 850

On 2005-06-16 JohnnyMrNinja said:

Look, Johnny, this is all ((( ` very simple. ` ) (^ ) ) 'ANSI' has nothing...NOTHING ~-( ) to do with what 'characters' '((,,,))) are displayed on the screen. ,-' ` ( , ANSI is just a way to control `-.-'`-.-'- different things that HAPPEN on the screen...such as where =()=: ,' aa to put the cursor, what colors to display...things like that.

ANSI is a sequence of characters that have a special meaning to the screen.

An ANSI sequence always starts with the ESCAPE character (ASCII 27, a left-arrow character).

That's an 'attention-getter;' it tells the screen that some instructions are about to arrive.

The ESCAPE character is then followed by a string of other characters that have a particular meaning to the screen.

For instance, ESC followed by '2J' is the ANSI code that means 'clear the screen.'

So...ANSI is a string of characters that control different things that HAPPEN on the screen.

ANSI has nothing to do with what characters APPEAR on the screen. There's no such thing as an 'ANSI character.'

Have you got this so far? Good. It's pretty simple.

Okay. Now...here's what ASCII is:

ASCII is the actual CHARACTERS -- the letters, the numbers, and the punctuation marks -- that can be displayed on the screen to form words and sentences.

Standard ASCII starts with the 'space' character (decimal 32), and goes up through the '~' character (decimal 126).

But there are some other characters, too...such as the 'smiley face,' and the 'musical note.' These are located below the standard ASCII characters. They're called LOW ASCII charac- ters. They're the ones from decimal 0 through decimal 31.

And there's even more! There are a whole bunch of 'box drawing' characters, and funny Greek letters, and various letters with accents (like the French 'e'), and stuff like that.

These are located above the standard ASCII alphabetical characters, and they're called HIGH ASCII characters. They go from decimal 127 through decimal 255.

So ASCII simply refers to the actual, individual characters that can be displayed on the screen.

And remember, there are 3 different groups of ASCII characters:

LOW ASCII........0 through 31

STANDARD ASCII...32 through 126

HIGH ASCII.......127 through 255

What you need is an 'ASCII Table.' It's a little chart that shows all of the ASCII characters, and also shows the number that corresponds to each of those ASCII characters.

Once you have an ASCII Table, all of this will make sense to you.

If you have any computer books, look in the back of them. Almost every computer book has an ASCII table in it, some- where.

If you don't have any computer books, go to the Google term 'ASCII Table.' ASCII Tables are available on thousands of different web sites.

Well, that's about it. It's really easy. Find an ASCII Table, then have fun with all those funky characters!