millfork/docs/lang/text.md

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Text encodings ans escape sequences

Text encoding list

• default – default console encoding (can be omitted)

• scr – default screencodes (usually the same as default, a notable exception are the Commodore computers)

• ascii – standard ASCII

• pet or petscii – PETSCII (ASCII-like character set used by Commodore machines from VIC-20 onward)

• origpet or origpetscii – old PETSCII (Commodore PET with original ROMs)

• oldpet or oldpetscii – old PETSCII (Commodore PET with newer ROMs)

• cbmscr or petscr – Commodore screencodes

• apple2 – Apple II charset ($A0–$CF)

• bbc – BBC Micro character set

• sinclair – ZX Spectrum character set

• jis or jisx – JIS X 0201

• iso_de, iso_no, iso_se, iso_yu – various variants of ISO/IEC-646

• iso_dk, iso_fi – aliases for iso_no and iso_se respectively

• atascii or atari – ATASCII as seen on Atari 8-bit computers

• atasciiscr or atariscr – screencodes used by Atari 8-bit computers

When programming for Commodore, use pet for strings you're printing using standard I/O routines and petscr for strings you're copying to screen memory directly.

Escape sequences

Available everywhere

• {q} – double quote symbol

• {apos} – apostrophe/single quote

• {x00}–{xff} – a character of the given hexadecimal value

Available only in some encodings

• {n} – new line

• {b} – backspace

• {lbrace}, {rbrace} – opening and closing curly brace (only in encodings that support braces)

• {up}, {down}, {left}, {right} – control codes for moving the cursor

• {white}, {black}, {red}, {green}, {blue}, {cyan}, {yellow}, {purple} – control codes for changing the text color

• {bgwhite}, {bgblack}, {bgred}, {bggreen}, {bgblue}, {bgcyan}, {bgyellow}, {bgpurple} – control codes for changing the text background color

• {reverse}, {reverseoff} – inverted mode on/off

Escape sequence availability

Encoding	new line	braces	backspace	cursor movement	text colour, reverse	background colour
pet	yes	no	no	yes	yes	no
petscr	no	no	no	no	no	no
sinclair	yes	yes	no	yes	yes	yes
ascii, iso_*	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no
apple2	no	yes	no	no	no	no
atascii	yes	no	yes	yes	no	no
atasciiscr	no	no	no	no	no	no
all the rest	yes	yes	no	no	no	no