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Why the Apple II Didn’t Support Lowercase Letters

vintagecomputing.com

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Re: Why the Apple II Didn’t Support Lowercase Letters

#21

Post by tlb »

thought_alarm wrote: post #16

I've always wanted to know why Apple II video screen is only 280 pixels wide. The Apple II video screen is 40 bytes wide, but it only draw 7 pixels per byte, for a total of 280 pixels. The 8th bit was used for selecting the color pallet (eventually; initially the 8th bit was just ignored) Drawing 7 pixels per byte makes everything a lot more complicated, so it would seem to go against Woz's obsession for simplicity.…

For text, a 5x7 dot matrix font fits nicely in 7 (wide) x 8 (high). 8-pixel wide characters look funny: characters have to be an odd number of pixels to get symmetrical letters like A, so you either have 1 or 3 pixels spacing between.

While NTSC allows 320 pixels, typical analog TVs overscanned a lot and you'd miss the right and left column or 2 of text.

Re: Why the Apple II Didn’t Support Lowercase Letters

#22

Post by C1sc0cat »

pilsetnieks wrote: post #15
varbhat wrote: post #4

I don't know why but interest of computer community shifted from uppercase letters to lowercase letters over the course of time.

Lowercase is simply easier to read because of more diverse letter and word shapes. https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/72622/how-easy-to-rea...

I can recall when using Mixed case in your Hollerith Constants was considered a bit flash :-)

Hollerith constants where the way you did text to terminal IO in Early Fortran's.

For example "Press 1 to exit, 2 to edit settings, 3 to start run?" instead of just "?"

Re: Why the Apple II Didn’t Support Lowercase Letters

#24

Post by te »

byteCoder wrote: post #14
Finnucane wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The II+ was basically a II with support for lowercase and 80-column lines added by means of an expansion card.

Actually, the ][+ was still 40-column, uppercase. I remember wiring a pin off my keyboard controller card to the paddle button input and add a replacement character ROM to get lowercase support. It was the //e and //c that had built-in lowercase support.

We had an Apple II+ with the limitations you describe. However, we purchased and installed the 80-column card that provided both 80-columns and lowercase characters, which is what I think the parent comment is suggesting.

Re: Why the Apple II Didn’t Support Lowercase Letters

#25

Post by mschaef »

byteCoder wrote: post #14
Finnucane wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The II+ was basically a II with support for lowercase and 80-column lines added by means of an expansion card.

Actually, the ][+ was still 40-column, uppercase. I remember wiring a pin off my keyboard controller card to the paddle button input and add a replacement character ROM to get lowercase support. It was the //e and //c that had built-in lowercase support.

Interesting... did the ][+ support an add on 80 column card? My hunch is no, but not sure at all

Re: Why the Apple II Didn’t Support Lowercase Letters

#26

Post by js2 »

Finnucane wrote: post #10
rogueresearch wrote: post #7

Later versions of the Apple II line did eventually support uppercase. I forget which had it first, but the IIgs certainly did.

The II+ was basically a II with support for lowercase and 80-column lines added by means of an expansion card.

No, that's not correct. The II+ was a II with Applesoft BASIC instead of Woz's Integer BASIC, and the ability to automatically boot from disk at power on. That's it.

Lowercase and 80 columns were available from third-party vendors for both the II and the II+.

Source: I still own my II. Also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_series

Re: Why the Apple II Didn’t Support Lowercase Letters

#27

Post by zwieback »

fattire wrote: post #3

Some of the Apple clones, such as the Franklin ACE models and others, offered lowercase. Do a quick search for "apple II shift key mod" and you'll find vintage PDF instructions for adding it yourself.. https://archive.org/stream/II_II-Shift-Key_Modification/II_I...

I did that on my German Apple ][ Europlus and also got a re-burned EEProm to display the lower case. I like the original Woz story but it seems strange that the later models didn't enable lowercase.

Re: Why the Apple II Didn’t Support Lowercase Letters

#28

Post by zwieback »

mschaef wrote: post #25
byteCoder wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the ][+ was still 40-column, uppercase. I remember wiring a pin off my keyboard controller card to the paddle button input and add a replacement character ROM to get lowercase support. It was the //e and //c that had built-in lowercase support.

Interesting... did the ][+ support an add on 80 column card? My hunch is no, but not sure at all

Yeah, it did. Also a Z80 card so you could run CP/M. With CP/M I could run Fortran and C on my ][+, it was a lot easier to get pirated versions of CP/M SW than original Apple Pascal or Fortran.

Re: Why the Apple II Didn’t Support Lowercase Letters

#30

Post by NelsonMinar »

fattire wrote: post #3

Some of the Apple clones, such as the Franklin ACE models and others, offered lowercase. Do a quick search for "apple II shift key mod" and you'll find vintage PDF instructions for adding it yourself.. https://archive.org/stream/II_II-Shift-Key_Modification/II_I...

Yeah the Franklin Ace was mostly an Apple ][+ clone but had lower case (but no 80 columns). It's kind of a miracle so much software worked with that.
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