These Tables ...

These extended ASCII tables are a chart of all the original 7-bit, ASCII codes in the original ASCII Standard Character Set plus the IBM Extended Characters Set, each character value being stored in the eighth bit. The tables display the decimal values, the hexadecimal values and an accurate rendering of the actual characters. These extended ASCII character sets originated in the early IBP PC DOS system and because of this they can only be represented in bitmapped, graphical format on a web page.

History Of ...

Once combined by IBM, the ASCII Standard Character Set and the IBM Extended Character Set became the on-board 'ROM-BIOS' character set for all IBM PC's and compatibles. It is in reality the DOS character set because Microsoft Windows and Web browsers each use their own character sets.

Like the dinosaur, the ASCII/IBM character set ruled the world of computing for many years until progress rendered it inadequate for modern day needs. In it's heyday we thought it was wonderful because it provided basic ASCII characters plus all these wonderful extended characters for making boxes and windows in DOS, something hitherto unheard of. I was never too sure about some of the foreign characters, perhaps an early attempt by IBM at internationalisation.

ASCII Meaning ...

The acronym ASCII stands for American Standard Code For Information Interchange. If we remember that computers only understand numbers, the ASCII code is the numerical representation of the alpha/numeric characters understood by humans (e.g. '1,2,3' or 'A,B,C' or 'd,e,f', etc.). ASCII codes in the range 0...31 represent special, non-printing characters called Control Characters (e.g. 'c/r,l/f,f/f', etc.). ASCII was originally used with teletype machines and so many of the Control Character descriptions can be difficult to understand.

In more practical terms you may be asked to save a file in ASCII format and all this means that the file should be saved as a plain test file, without any formatting or Markup instructions contained in the file. Programs that are designed to handle plain text files are called text editors and these include Notepad, EditPad, etc. and they should not be confused with word processors like Microsoft Word.