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  • Support for CP850 and/or international characters

    From Karloch@1:103/705 to All on Mon Jul 16 09:28:52 2018
    I was wondering whatever it is possible for Synchronet to support character sets beyond CP437 such as CP850. The objective is to support international characters such as ASCII 160, 161, 162...

    The closer thing I have found is the fonts directory (http://wiki.synchro.net/dir:ctrl#fonts), but that requires specific terminals supporting it (SyncTerm).

    Regards,
    Carlos

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    * Synchronet * HISPAMSX BBS - The 8-bit MSX computers BBS - 2:345/111@fidonet
    * Origin: Vertrauen - [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net (1:103/705)
  • From Nightfox@1:103/705 to Karloch on Mon Jul 16 09:35:40 2018
    Re: Support for CP850 and/or international characters
    By: Karloch to All on Mon Jul 16 2018 09:28 am

    I was wondering whatever it is possible for Synchronet to support character sets beyond CP437 such as CP850. The objective is to support international characters such as ASCII 160, 161, 162...

    I believe Synchronet can display such characters already. For instance, you can have high-ASCII characters in your menu files. The box drawing characters that are often used in BBS menu files are ASCII 179-218, and there are other characters in the high-ASCII range often used on BBSes as well.

    Nightfox

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    * Synchronet * Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com
    * Origin: Vertrauen - [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net (1:103/705)
  • From Digital Man@1:103/705 to Karloch on Mon Jul 16 20:34:15 2018
    Re: Support for CP850 and/or international characters
    By: Karloch to All on Mon Jul 16 2018 09:28 am

    I was wondering whatever it is possible for Synchronet to support character sets beyond CP437 such as CP850. The objective is to support international characters such as ASCII 160, 161, 162...

    What is "ASCII 160", you mean ASCII character value 160? US-ASCII stops at 127 (it's a 7-bit character encoding). So, whatever character value 160 represents will be beyond the ASCII (US-ASCII) definition.

    The closer thing I have found is the fonts directory (http://wiki.synchro.net/dir:ctrl#fonts), but that requires specific terminals supporting it (SyncTerm).

    Synchronet doesn't specifically *not* support character sets beyond ASCII and CP437, meaning, if you put bytes in a file (like a menu file or a script), Synchronet will send them to the remote client/terminal, whatever those bytes are or what characters they're supposed to represent.

    You could make your whole BBS support some other character set and Synchronet wouldn't know the difference, but if users call with a common BBS terminal expecting CP437 or just straight ASCII, they might have a hard time.

    digital man

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    * Origin: Vertrauen - [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net (1:103/705)
  • From Karloch@1:103/705 to Digital Man on Wed Jul 18 16:18:27 2018
    Re: Support for CP850 and/or international characters
    By: Digital Man to Karloch on Mon Jul 16 2018 20:34:15

    What is "ASCII 160", you mean ASCII character value 160? US-ASCII stops at 127 (it's a 7-bit character encoding). So, whatever character value 160 represents will be beyond the ASCII (US-ASCII) definition.

    That's right, I am talking about extended ASCII table.

    Synchronet doesn't specifically *not* support character sets beyond ASCII and CP437, meaning, if you put bytes in a file (like a menu file or a script), Synchronet will send them to the remote client/terminal, whatever those bytes are or what characters they're supposed to represent.

    So it is something that has to be supported at the client side and the files Synchronet use; nothing to do server-side in that regards.

    You could make your whole BBS support some other character set and Synchronet wouldn't know the difference, but if users call with a common BBS terminal expecting CP437 or just straight ASCII, they might have a hard time.

    Understood! Thank you so much for the clear explanation.

    Regards,
    Carlos

    ---
    * Synchronet * HISPAMSX BBS - The 8-bit MSX computers BBS - 2:345/111@fidonet
    * Origin: Vertrauen - [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net (1:103/705)