[net.books] ascii standard

chongo@nsc.uucp (Curt Noll) (09/22/83)

im looking for a book which gives the full ascii standard, and the
intended use of the control characters.  any ideas?

chongo /\../\

brucec@tekecs.UUCP (Bruce Cohen) (09/26/83)

If the standards themselves (ANSI X3.4-1977, "Code for Information
Interchange," ANSI X3.41-1974, "Code Extension Techniques for Use with
the 7-Bit Coded Character Set of ASCII," and ANSI X3.64-1979,
"Additional Controls for Use with ASCII") won't do the job, try "Coded
Character Sets: History and Development" by Charles MacKenzie,
Addison-Wesley.  I haven't read it myself, but it's in the Systems
Programming Series, which is generally worthwhile.

BTW, the standards are available from ANSI:

	American National Standards Institute, Inc.
	1430 Broadway, New York, NY 10018

				Bruce Cohen
				UUCP:	...!teklabs!tekecs!brucec
				CSNET:	tekecs!brucec@tektronix
				ARPA:	tekecs!brucec.tektronix@rand-relay

minow@decvax.UUCP (Martin Minow) (09/27/83)

John McNamara's "Introduction to Data Communications"
published by Digital Press is the standard reference
-- if you don't want to plow through Ansi and ISO
standard documentation.

Control character usage is -- unfortunately -- less
standardized than one might hope.  There are some
internal Dec reference standards that run to several
hundred pages (for Escape sequence standardization)

Martin Minow
decvax!minow