Entering Symbols in a program

[Bob K]

I came across a program called BREAKOUT and noticed that whoever wrote the program used the symbol for EURO in the program and was wondering how he/she/they did it. Do I need

a European TI or is there some secret to doing this? Is there some way to replace the EURO sign with one that I could use a US Keyboard?

I have added the program as a attachment, maybe someone in the know could advise me. The lines It appears in are 250-260-270-280-290.

 

Thanks

Bob K.

BREAKOUT.txt

Edited January 16, 2017 by Bob K

[apersson850]

TI 99/4A consoles sold in Europe only differed in the video output, not in the character set. We had to define our characters ourselves.

It's probably some character code that's represented by the € sign when looked at in a different environment.

[sometimes99er]

Obviously we're cross platform here.

 

Looking at the text file, the Euro sign appears to be ASCII code 128. I don't know if the Euro sign was around in 1984. What you get when looking at the file depends on the font you're using.

 

Internally the ASCII codes are stored in the TI Basic / XB with an offset of 96, but I don't think that's a concern here.

 

Don't know how to enter 128 directly on the TI, but a substitute making up the string could be something like

 

100 A$="BLA BLA"&CHR$(128)&"BLA BLA"

110 PRINT A$

[+jedimatt42]

The programmer redefines the graphic for ascii 128 in libe 310. Then some of his string literals contain control characters.

 

I used to use a trick in Extended Basic to make graphics entry easier, where in the beginning of my code I would redefine characters that match what you get when you press ctrl-a, ctrl-s, etc.. run the code with the redefines, then enter display at strings typing ctrl-a, ctrl-s etc, so I could see my graphics as I typed them in.

 

Try loading his code and listing it. Then run it, break fctn4, and list it again.

 

-M@