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Apple II character set

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Apple II text mode uses the 7-bit ASCII (us-ascii) character set. The high-bit is set to display in normal mode on the 40x24 text screen.

Character sets

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Apple II / Apple II plus

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The original Signetics 2513 character generator chip has 64 glyphs for upper case, numbers, symbols, and punctuation characters. Each 5x7 pixel bitmap matrix is displayed in a 7x8 character cell on the text screen. The 64 characters can be displayed in INVERSE in the range $00 to $3F, FLASHing in the range $40 to $7F, and NORMAL mode in the range $80 to $FF. Normal mode characters are repeated in the $80 to $FF range.

To display lowercase letters, applications can run in the graphics modes and use custom fonts, rather than running in text mode using the font in ROM.

Apple //e and //c (MouseText mode)

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0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
0x @ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O
1x P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _
2x ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . /
3x 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ?
4x [a] [b]
5x
6x ` a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o
7x p q r s t u v w x y z { | } ~
8x @ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O
9x P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _
Ax  SP  ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . /
Bx 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ?
Cx @ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O
Dx P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _
Ex ` a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o
Fx p q r s t u v w x y z { | } ~
  1. ^ Apple uses U+F8FF in the Corporate Private Use Area to display the solid Apple logo. It does not have a Unicode code point and it is usually not supported on non-Apple platforms.
  2. ^ The left and right "running man"[1] halves were replaced with different characters in the Apple IIGS version of the MouseText character set (shown below.)

Apple IIGS

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Two characters in the Apple II MouseText character set was updated for the GS. The characters unique to MouseText are encoded in Unicode's Symbols for Legacy Computing block.[1][2]

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
0x @ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O
1x P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _
2x ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . /
3x 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ?
4x
5x
6x ` a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o
7x p q r s t u v w x y z { | } ~
8x @ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O
9x P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _
Ax  SP  ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . /
Bx 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ?
Cx @ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O
Dx P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _
Ex ` a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o
Fx p q r s t u v w x y z { | } ~

References

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  1. ^ a b "Symbols for Legacy Computing (The Unicode Standard, Version 15.1)" (PDF). Unicode Consortium. 2023. Retrieved March 18, 2024.
  2. ^ "Apple II MouseText to Unicode Mapping".
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