ASCII Codes and Key Names

For ASCII codes and key  names see:

 

Onestep        ASCII Tables

Onestep        Keys & Key Names

 

The remainder of this section gives a explanation of the ASCII character sets and key names. If you are troubleshooting a keyboard or character display problem, be sure to read all of the explanation below before referring to the tables.

 

The translation of a key you type on the keyboard to a displayed character on the screen depends on several related aspects of character handling. A complete discussion of these topics is well beyond the scope of this document. However, a basic picture of the steps in the keystroke and character translation process will help you understand how characters are processed in your system, and why they occasionally may not come out the way you expect.

 

Internally, computers use numbers to represent the keys you press and the characters displayed on the screen. To display the text that you type, your computer and operating system require five pieces of information:

 

1.The numeric key code for the physical key you pressed (determined by your keyboard hardware);
2.The specific character that key code represents based on your current keyboard layout or country setting;
3.The character set currently in use on your system (see below);
4.The international code page in use for that character set; and
5.The display font used to display the character.

 

If the key codes produced by your keyboard, the code page, and the font you choose are not fully compatible, the characters displayed on the screen will not match what you type. The differences are likely to appear in line-drawing characters, "international" (non-English) characters, and special symbols, but not in commonly-used U.S. English alphabetic, numeric, or punctuation characters.

 

The control codes can be entered on most keyboards by pressing the Ctrl key plus another character, or by pressing the special keys Tab, Enter, Backspace, and Esc.

 

See your operating system documentation for more information about character sets, code pages, and country and language support. Refer to your operating system and/or font documentation for details on the full character set available in any particular font.

 

The tables in this section are based on U.S. English conventions. Your system may differ if it is configured for a different country or language. See your operating system documentation for more information about country and language support.