That immediately brings back memories (or more feelings) of playing [0]. It was, for a while, the only game my father had installed on his luggable, so I played it a lot as a small kid. I also think a did learn a lot of English from it.
Why is there a “small house” in IBM's Code page 437?
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Re: Why is there a “small house” in IBM's Code page 437?
#22There’s a certain amount of “it just is” when it comes to non-textual characters. I remember being interviewed by a reporter from The Wall Street Journal about the claim that Wingdings had an antisemitic message secretly encoded in it because NYC output as the sequence skull and crossbones-star of David-thumbs up, but the choice of where those characters were encoded is purely a consequence of grouping similarly themed characters together (so, e.g., the star of David comes in the midst of a sequence of religious symbols).
Re: Why is there a “small house” in IBM's Code page 437?
#23There’s a certain amount of “it just is” when it comes to non-textual characters. I remember being interviewed by a reporter from The Wall Street Journal about the claim that Wingdings had an antisemitic message secretly encoded in it because NYC output as the sequence skull and crossbones-star of David-thumbs up, but the choice of where those characters were encoded is purely a consequence of grouping similarly them…
In a future font (Webdings?) Microsoft deliberately set the letters NYC to be an eye, a heart, and a city skyline, in response to this kerfuffle.
Re: Why is there a “small house” in IBM's Code page 437?
#24Does anyone know why it’s “code page 437”? Like why 437? Was there 437 code pages before it? Does the 437 bit pattern map to something in the hardware? Was it a character rom part number?
There's a list of known code pages on Wikipedia[0]
Re: Why is there a “small house” in IBM's Code page 437?
#25What I remember from my experiences with terminals and printers (the only display devices available at the time) from 1978-1980 was that the 0x7F character rendered as a checkered box. This correlates with (0xFF) Figure 5 in the article. This was common among all printers I worked with, Teletype, Epson, Okidata, TI, Printronix, and even IBM. Also all the Lear Siegler, Televideo, DEC, Hazeltine, terminals I used did something similar. Even the character ROMs in my Ferguson Big Board II, and Kaypro II used the same checkered box pattern.
Re: Why is there a “small house” in IBM's Code page 437?
#26[deleted]
Re: Why is there a “small house” in IBM's Code page 437?
#27Is there no one left to ask?
Re: Why is there a “small house” in IBM's Code page 437?
#28I noticed the article uses the Polyvers font (complete with bold capitals in the headings), which I haven't seen on the Internet. Wonder what that is.
EDIT: It seems to coexist with U001, which is "An Univers-like typeface that comes with GhostPDL made by URW++."
Re: Why is there a “small house” in IBM's Code page 437?
#29Reminds me of compass UI indicators in modern FPS games.
Re: Why is there a “small house” in IBM's Code page 437?
#30Wow, it really goes in depth on the topic, in the beginning I was like "wtf am I even reading this" and after a while I was hooked by the writing style, the depth of the research and also the design of the website. Really, really cool.
Exactly this. Kept thinking, “you’re not getting this time back” … but kept reading anyway. And wasn’t disappointed by the lack of closure either. An essay worth the journey despite the end.