The GEM character set is the

character set Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using digital computers. The numerical values tha ...

Digital Research Digital Research, Inc. (DR or DRI) was a company created by Gary Kildall to market and develop his CP/M operating system and related 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit systems like MP/M, Concurrent DOS, FlexOS, Multiuser DOS, DOS Plus, DR DOS and Gr ...

's graphical user interface GEM on

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

platforms. It is based on code page 437, the original character set of the IBM PC, and like that set includes

ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...

codes 32–126, extended codes for accented letters (

diacritics A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

), and other symbols. It differs from code page 437 in using other

dingbat In typography, a dingbat (sometimes more formally known as a printer's ornament or printer's character) is an ornament, specifically, a glyph used in typesetting, often employed to create box frames, (similar to box-drawing characters) or as ...

s at code points 0–31, in exchanging the

box-drawing character Box-drawing characters, also known as line-drawing characters, are a form of semigraphics widely used in text user interfaces to draw various geometric frames and boxes. Box-drawing characters typically only work well with monospaced fonts. ...

s 176–223 for international characters and other symbols, and exchanging code point 236 with the symbol for line integral. However, GEM is more similar to code page 865 because the codepoints of Ø and ø match the codepoints in that codepage. The

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent public companies, Motorol ...

-based GEM adaptation for the Atari ST family of computers utilized the similar

Atari ST character set The Atari ST character set is the character set of the Atari ST personal computer family including the Atari STE, TT and Falcon. It is based on code page 437, the original character set of the IBM PC, and like that set includes ASCII codes 32 ...

. It has swapped ¢ and ø and has also swapped ¥ and Ø (to match code page 437 more). It also has the ß (sharp s) at code point 158, reversed not sign (⌐) at code point 169 (as in code page 437), not sign (¬) at code point 170 (as in code page 437), ½ at code point 171 (as in code page 437), ¼ at code point 172 (as in code page 437), ¨ (diaeresis) at code point 184, ´ (acute) at code point 185, ĳ at code point 192, Ĳ at code point 193,

Hebrew character The Hebrew character (''Orthosia gothica'') is a moth in the family Noctuidae. The species was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1758 10th edition of ''Systema Naturae''. It is found throughout Europe. Both the common and binomial names ...

s at code points 194-220, section sign (§) at code point 221, logical and at code point 222, infinity sign at code point 223, bullet (•) at codepoint 249, cubed sign (superscript three) at code point 254, the macron at code point 255, ATARI-specific characters at codepoints 5, 6, 7, 14, 15, 28, 29, 30, and 31, LED 0-9 at codepoints 16-25, and ə (Schwa) at codepoint 26. Codepoints 12, 13, and 27 are mapped to the C0 controls. A slight adaptation for

Ventura Publisher Ventura ( Italian, Portuguese and Spanish for "fortune") may refer to: Places ; Brazil * Boa Ventura de São Roque, a municipality in the state of Paraná, southern Brazil * Boa Ventura, Paraíba, a municipality in the state of Paraíba, i ...

is the similar

Ventura International Ventura International (or ''VENTURA_INT'') is an 8-bit character encoding created by Ventura Software for use with Ventura Publisher. Ventura International is based on the GEM character set, but ¢ and ø are swapped and ¥ and Ø are swapped so ...

character set, it has code points 0-31, 127, and 218-255 empty, and has swapped ¢ and ø and has also swapped ¥ and Ø (to match code page 437 more). In contrast to this, the GEM-derived file manager

ViewMAX ViewMAX is a CUA-compliant file manager supplied with DR DOS versions 5.0 and 6.0. It is based on a cut-down runtime version of Digital Research's GEM/3 graphical user interface modified to run only a single statically built applicatio ...

, which shipped with some versions of

DR DOS DR-DOS (written as DR DOS, without a hyphen, in versions up to and including 6.0) is a disk operating system for IBM PC compatibles. Upon its introduction in 1988, it was the first DOS attempting to be compatible with IBM PC DOS and MS- ...

as a

DOSSHELL DOS Shell is a file manager that debuted in MS-DOS and PC DOS version 4.0, released in June 1988. It was discontinued in MS-DOS version 6.22, but remained part of the Supplemental Disk. The Supplemental Disk could be ordered or could be do ...

replacement, does not use the GEM character set, but loads its display fonts from DOS .CPI files depending on the system's current code page.

Character set

The following table shows the GEM character set. Each character is shown with a potential

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...

equivalent, although some codes do not have a unique, single Unicode equivalent; the correct choice may depend upon context. Note that code point 20 (14₁₆) has an unfilled paragraph sign, and code point 188 (BC₁₆) has a filled paragraph sign.

References

{{Digital Research Character sets Computer-related introductions in 1985

Character set

See also

References