In computing FOCAL character set refers to a group of 8-bit single byte

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 computers. The numerical values that make up a c ...

s introduced by

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

since 1979. It was used in several RPN

calculator An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics. The first solid-state electronic calculator was created in the early 1960s. Pocket-si ...

s supporting the

FOCAL Focal or FOCAL may refer to: *Focal (lexicographical website), an Irish lexicographical website *FOCAL (programming language), a programming language for the PDP-8 and similar machines * Focal (HP-41), for programming HP calculators * FOCAL (space ...

programming language, like the

HP-41C The HP-41C series are programmable, expandable, continuous memory handheld RPN calculators made by Hewlett-Packard from 1979 to 1990. The original model, HP-41C, was the first of its kind to offer alphanumeric display capabilities. Later came ...

/ CV/ CX as well as the later HP-42S, which was introduced in 1988 and produced up to 1995. As such, it is also used by SwissMicros' DM41/ L, both introduced in 2015, and is implicitly supported by the DM42, introduced in 2017 (although the later calculator utilizes Free42, which is based on

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

internally).

Character set

The character set is derived from

ASCII ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...

, but with the control code range and some high bit characters replaced by various special characters. When Hewlett-Packard introduced the HP-42S in 1988, the FOCAL character set was revised to include more characters, including a number of characters already provided by the HP 82240A infrared thermo printer, which had been introduced in 1986, as part of its extended variant of the 1985 revision of the HP Roman-8 character set, although at completely different code points. There is no code point definition for the

euro sign The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists of a stylized letter E (or epsilon), crossed by ...

in this character set. Translation from HP-42S character set to the modified HP Roman-8 (supported by

HP 82240A HP may refer to: Businesses, groups, organisations * HP Inc., an American technology company ** Hewlett-Packard, the predecessor to HP before the 2015 split ** Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the other company created as a result of the split * HP ...

etc.) character set:

Character set

See also

Notes

References

Further reading