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Text encodings and escape sequences

Defining custom encodings

Every platform is defined in an .tbl file with an appropriate name. The file is looked up in the directories on the include path, first directly, then in the encoding subdirectory.

TODO: document the file format.

Text encoding list

• default – default console encoding (can be omitted)

• scr – default screencodes (usually the same as default, a notable exception are the Commodore computers)

• ascii – standard ASCII

• petscii or pet – PETSCII (ASCII-like character set used by Commodore machines from VIC-20 onward)

• petsciijp or petjp – PETSCII as used on Japanese versions of Commodore 64

• origpetscii or origpet – old PETSCII (Commodore PET with original ROMs)

• oldpetscii or oldpet – old PETSCII (Commodore PET with newer ROMs)

• geos_de – text encoding used by the German version of GEOS for C64

• cbmscr or petscr – Commodore screencodes

• cbmscrjp or petscrjp – Commodore screencodes as used on Japanese versions of Commodore 64

• apple2 – original Apple II charset ($A0–$DF)

• apple2e – Apple IIe charset

• apple2c – alternative Apple IIc charset

• apple2gs – Apple IIgs charset

• macroman – Macintosh Western Latin charset

• bbc – BBC Micro character set

• sinclair – ZX Spectrum character set

• zx80 – ZX80 character set

• zx81 – ZX81 character set

• jis or jisx – JIS X 0201

• iso_de, iso_no, iso_se, iso_yu – various variants of ISO/IEC-646

  • iso_dk, iso_fi – aliases for iso_no and iso_se respectively

• dmcs – DEC Multinational Character Set

• lics – Lotus International Character Set

• iso8859_1, iso8859_2, iso8859_3, iso8859_4, iso8859_5, iso8859_7, iso8859_9, iso8859_10, iso8859_13, iso8859_14, iso8859_15, iso8859_13 – ISO 8859-1, ISO 8859-2, ISO 8859-3, ISO 8859-4, ISO 8859-5, ISO 8859-7, ISO 8859-9, ISO 8859-10, ISO 8859-13, ISO 8859-14, ISO 8859-15, ISO 8859-16,

  • iso1, latin1 – aliases for iso8859_1
  • iso2, latin2 – aliases for iso8859_2
  • iso3, latin3 – aliases for iso8859_3
  • iso4, latin4 – aliases for iso8859_4
  • iso5 – alias for iso8859_5
  • iso7 – alias for iso8859_7
  • iso9, latin5, – aliases for iso8859_9
  • iso10, latin6 – aliases for iso8859_10
  • iso13, latin7 – aliases for iso8859_13
  • iso14, latin8 – aliases for iso8859_14
  • iso_15, latin9, latin0 – aliases for iso8859_15
  • iso16, latin10 – aliases for iso8859_16

• brascii – BraSCII

• cp437, cp850, cp851, cp852, cp855, cp858, cp866 – DOS codepages 437, 850, 851, 852, 855, 858, 866

• mazovia – Mazovia encoding

• kamenicky – Kamenický encoding

• cp1250, cp1251, cp1252, cp1253, cp1254, cp1257 – Windows codepages 1250, 1251, 1252, 1253, 1254, 1257

• msx_intl, msx_jp, msx_ru, msx_br – MSX character encoding, International, Japanese, Russian and Brazilian respectively

  • msx_us, msx_uk, msx_fr, msx_de – aliases for msx_intl

• cpc_en, cpc_fr, cpc_es, cpc_da – Amstrad CPC character encoding, English, French, Spanish and Danish respectively

• pcw or amstrad_cpm – Amstrad CP/M encoding, the US variant (language 0), as used on PCW machines

• pokemon1en, pokemon1jp, pokemon1es, pokemon1fr – text encodings used in 1st generation Pokémon games, English, Japanese, Spanish/Italian and French/German respectively

  • pokemon1it, pokemon1de – aliases for pokemon1es and pokemon1fr respectively

• atascii or atari – ATASCII as seen on Atari 8-bit computers

• atasciiscr or atariscr – screencodes used by Atari 8-bit computers

• koi7n2 or short_koi – KOI-7 N2

• koi8r, koi8u, koi8ru, koi8e, koi8f, koi8t – various variants of KOI-8

• vectrex – built-in Vectrex font

• galaksija – text encoding used on Galaksija computers

• trs80m1 – text encoding used on TRS-80 Model 1

• trs80m3 – text encoding used on TRS-80 Model 3

• coco – text encoding used on Tandy Color Computer

• cocoscr – Tandy Color Computer screencodes

• z1013 – text encodind used on Robotron Z1013

• ebcdic – EBCDIC codepage 037 (partial coverage)

• utf8 – UTF-8

• utf16be, utf16le – UTF-16BE and UTF-16LE

• utf32be, utf32le – UTF-32BE and UTF-32LE

When programming for Commodore, use petscii for strings you’re printing using standard I/O routines and petsciiscr for strings you’re copying to screen memory directly.

When programming for Atari, use atascii for strings you’re printing using standard I/O routines and atasciiscr for strings you’re copying to screen memory directly.

Escape sequences

Escape sequences allow for including characters in the string literals that would be otherwise impossible to type.

Some escape sequences may expand to multiple characters. For example, in several encodings {n} expands to {x0D}{x0A}.

Available everywhere

• {x00}–{xff} – a character of the given hexadecimal value

• {copyright_year} – this expands to the current year in digits

• {program_name} – this expands to the name of the output file without the file extension

• {program_name_upper} – the same, but uppercased

• {nullchar} – the null terminator for strings ("{nullchar}" is equivalent to ""z).
  The exact value of {nullchar} is encoding-dependent:

  • in the vectrex encoding it’s {x80},
  • in the zx80 encoding it’s {x01},
  • in the zx81 encoding it’s {x0b},
  • in the petscr and petscrjp encodings it’s {xe0},
  • in the apple2e encoding it’s {x7f},
  • in the atasciiscr encoding it’s {xdb},
  • in the pokemon1* encodings it’s {x50},
  • in the cocoscr encoding it’s exceptionally two bytes: {xd0}
  • in the utf16be and utf16le encodings it’s exceptionally two bytes: {x00}{x00}
  • in the utf32be and utf32le encodings it’s exceptionally four bytes: {x00}{x00}{x00}{x00}
  • in other encodings it’s {x00} (this may be a subject to change in future versions).

Available only in some encodings

• {apos} – apostrophe/single quote (available everywhere except for zx80, zx81 and galaksija)

• {q} – double quote symbol (available everywhere except for pokemon1* encodings)

• {n} – new line

• {b} – backspace

• {lbrace}, {rbrace} – opening and closing curly brace (only in encodings that support braces)

• {up}, {down}, {left}, {right} – control codes for moving the cursor

• {white}, {black}, {red}, {green}, {blue}, {cyan}, {yellow}, {purple} – control codes for changing the text color (petscii, petsciijp, sinclair only)

• {bgwhite}, {bgblack}, {bgred}, {bggreen}, {bgblue}, {bgcyan}, {bgyellow}, {bgpurple} – control codes for changing the text background color (sinclair only)

• {reverse}, {reverseoff} – inverted mode on/off

• {yen}, {pound}, {cent}, {euro}, {copy} – yen symbol, pound symbol, cent symbol, euro symbol, copyright symbol

• {nbsp}, {shy} – non-breaking space, soft hyphen

• {pi} – letter π

• {u0000}–{u1fffff} – Unicode codepoint (available in UTF encodings only)

Character availability

For ISO/DOS/Windows/UTF encodings, consult external sources.

Encoding	lowercase letters	backslash	currencies	intl	card suits
pet,	yes¹	no	£	none	yes¹
origpet	yes¹	yes		none	yes¹
oldpet	yes²	yes		none	yes²
petscr	yes¹	no	£	none	yes¹
petjp	no	no	¥	katakana³	yes³
petscrjp	no	no	¥	katakana³	yes³
geos_de	yes	no			no
sinclair, bbc	yes	yes	£	none	no
zx80, zx81	no	no	£	none	no
apple2	no	yes		none	no
atascii	yes	yes		none	yes
atasciiscr	yes	yes		none	yes
z1013	yes	yes		none	yes
jis	yes	no	¥	both kana	no
dmcs,lics	yes	yes	¢£¥	Western	no
brascii,macroman	yes	yes	¢£¥	Western	no
msx_intl,msx_br	yes	yes	¢£¥	Western	yes
msx_jp	yes	no	¥	katakana	yes
msx_ru	yes	yes		Russian⁴	yes
koi7n2	no	yes		Russian⁵	no
koi8*	yes	yes		Russian	no
cpc_en	yes	yes	£	none	yes
cpc_es	yes	yes		Spanish⁶	yes
cpc_fr	yes	no	£	French⁷	yes
cpc_da	yes	no	£	Nor/Dan.	yes
vectrex	no	yes		none	no
coco,cocoscr	no	yes		none	no
pokemon1jp	no	no		both kana	no
pokemon1en	yes	no		none	no
pokemon1fr	yes	no		Ger/Fre.	no
pokemon1es	yes	no		Spa/Ita.	no
galaksija	no	no		Yugoslav⁸	no

1. pet, origpet and petscr cannot display card suit symbols and lowercase letters at the same time. Card suit symbols are only available in graphics mode, in which lowercase letters are displayed as uppercase and uppercase letters are displayed as symbols.

2. oldpet cannot display card suit symbols and lowercase letters at the same time. Card suit symbols are only available in graphics mode, in which lowercase letters are displayed as symbols.

3. petjp and petscrjp cannot display card suit symbols and katakana at the same time. Card suit symbols are only available in graphics mode, in which katakana is displayed as symbols.

4. Letter Ё and uppercase Ъ are not available.

5. Only uppercase. Letters Ё and Ъ are not available.

6. No accented vowels.

7. Some accented vowels are not available.

8. Letter Đ is not available.

If the encoding does not support lowercase letters (e.g. apple2, petjp, petscrjp, koi7n2, vectrex), then text and character literals containing lowercase letters are automatically converted to uppercase. Only unaccented Latin and Cyrillic letters will be converted as such. Accented Latin letters will not be converted and will fail to compile without -flenient-encoding.
To detect if your default encoding does not support lowercase letters, test 'A' == 'a'.

Escape sequence availability

The table below may be incomplete.

Encoding	new line	braces	backspace	cursor movement	text colour	reverse	background colour
pet,petjp	yes	no	no	yes	yes	yes	no
origpet	yes	no	no	yes	no	yes	no
oldpet	yes	no	no	yes	no	yes	no
petscr, petscrjp	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
geos_de	no	no	no	no	no	yes	no
sinclair	yes	yes	no	yes	yes	yes	yes
zx80,zx81	yes	no	yes	yes	no	no	no
ascii, iso_*	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no	no
iso8869_*, cp*	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no	no
apple2	no	yes	no	no	no	no	no
apple2	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
apple2e	no	yes	no	no	no	no	no
apple2gs	no	yes	no	no	no	no	no
atascii	yes	no	yes	yes	no	no	no
atasciiscr	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
msx_*	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no
koi7n2	yes	no	yes	no	no	no	no
koi8*	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no	no
vectrex	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
coco	yes	no	yes	no	no	no	no
cocoscr	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
utf*	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no	no
all the rest	yes	yes	no	no	no	no	no