DOS characters and HTML equivalents

www.masterfilepro.info/chars.htm

Here, with HTML equivalents, are the most used characters in the default DOS character set. Not included are those not needing conversion (all but four of those numbered 32-126), the drawing and graphics characters, and a few that do not seem to have equivalents.

Notes:

1. There are often two ways of coding special characters for HTML. One uses the character's Windows/HTML number, while the other is descriptive and easier to remember. There are columns for both here, and also the characters themselves using each method. HTML(1) is used to produce Char.(1), and HTML(2) is used to produce Char.(2). Either should work, but older programs might not understand all of the characters in both forms. For example, Word 97 understands £ as a pound sign, but does not understand £. You can open this page with different browsers or word processors to check them. There should be no problem with most programs unless they are old.

2. Characters numbered 32-126 are the same for DOS and Windows, and most of them are used unchanged for HTML and therefore need no conversion. However, a few of them are used by HTML as part of its coding, and therefore need conversion when intended as text. Convert these text characters first, so that they are converted only where they are part of your text and not in any HTML coding you subsequently apply.

3. Characters not included here are those numbered 176-223 (which are for graphics or drawing in DOS), most of the characters numbered 32-126 (which do not need conversion), and some others that do not appear to have equivalents. Very few, if any, of those not provided for are likely to be much used in databases. For a list of them see the sample database.

4. To get the DOS characters converted by M-Pro to their HTML equivalents, put a list of the conversions (such as £=£) in the Tables section of a database. Then, within the format used for making a Web page, use the IFTLU and TLU commands to make the substitutions. Tables are provided in the sample database, and you can use M-Pro's clipboard (via F7) to copy them into your own database's Tables section.

5. If you want to use in a database some of the Windows characters which the standard DOS character set lacks, such as the copyright symbol or the Portuguese vowels with a tilde, you can do this by using substitutes and converting them to the appropriate HTML codes in the same way as for the characters shown in the table. For example, the copyright symbol © (obtained by using © or ©) can be added to the table in your database if you need it. See the sample database for further details.

6. The DOS numbers, Windows numbers and HTML numbers used here are those very widely used, particularly in English-speaking countries. There are many other character sets used around the world for DOS, for Windows and even for Web pages, but for most purposes they are unlikely to be of any concern to most M-Pro users. The character encoding used for a Web page should really be stated within it. The character set ("charset") used here is ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1). If interested, consult the Internet for more about these things, including the Universal Character Set, Unicode and much besides.

7. This page was made using Masterfile Professional (M-Pro).