Subj : Re: What is a text character in a computer?
To   : comp.programming
From : Phlip
Date : Sun Oct 02 2005 04:32 pm

thenightfly wrote:

> I know all about how binary numbers translate into text characters. My
> question is what exactly IS a text character? Is it a bitmap?

It is various things to various layers of an application and OS.

Just before you see it, it is a bitmap living in bit planes in your graphics 
coprocessor. Before it got there, it was either a bitmap or a vector image 
(a list of stroke paths) living in a font record in memory.

When you run an old-fashioned DOS-style program, and this runs in 
full-screen mode, the character is a bitmap living in a hardware table.

-- 
  Phlip
  http://www.greencheese.org/ZeekLand  <-- NOT a blog!!!

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