<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Navigation:  Report Generator > Report definitions in detail > The Settings 1 tab > Name and composition > ANSI/ASCII

Here you select which character code table to use for the generated reports.

 

For DXF reports where the form was created with a Windows version of AutoCAD, which may well be considered quite likely these days, please select ANSI. If you have an antique untouched form created in a DOS version of AutoCAD, select ASCII. However, such a form is likely of greater interest to an antiques dealer than to a user of cadett ELSA!

 

In the case of FMT reports, however, the ASCII format may still be of interest, especially in the following two circumstances:

 

•You use the report generator to export data to any software or system that requires ASCII data.

 

•You want to use semi-graphics in your text reports. Semi-graphics are defined only in ASCII.

 

The difference between ASCII and ANSI is otherwise mainly in the coding of national characters such as Å, Ä and Ö.

 

ASCII is the old honest code from the MS-DOS world. ANSI, on the other hand, derives from the Windows environment and others. Unfortunately, national characters like Å, Ä and Ö, are coded differently in the ANSI and ASCII standards, respectively.

 

If you generate text files, you should select the alternative that is best for whatever you are going to use the generated report for. If you are only going to print it on paper, the choice strictly does not matter. The important thing is that the character code of the form corresponds to your choice here. In other words, have you created the form in a Windows based tool and stored it as a standard Windows TXT file, for example with NOTEPAD, select ANSI. If you have stored the form in the MS-DOS character set (ASCII), you should select ASCII.

 

In the case of a DXF form, it is, as already mentioned, the AutoCAD version that decides. If you have created the form with a Windows based AutoCAD version (AutoCAD 2000 or later), select ANSI. If you have instead used a MS-DOS based AutoCAD version (like AutoCAD R12 for DOS), you must select ASCII. (Then you can of course ask yourself why in the world you should use AutoCAD R12 for DOS, but we leave that type of almost religious issues to others for pondering).

 

A special technique, already mentioned above, which may be used in text forms, is so-called semi-graphics. (In old versions of cadett ELSA, a large number of sample FMT forms using semi-graphics was provided). Semi-graphics means that simple graphics in the form of lines is represented by special character codes. Semi-graphics was once defined by IBM for its first PC and is part of the ASCII standard. However, semi-graphics do not appear in the ANSI standard for Windows. This means that if you want to use semi-graphics, you can use a DOS-based tool to draw your FMT forms. The choice here should then be ASCII. (A suitable tool could for example be Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS. The above-mentioned antique dealer may be a suitable place to buy the very fine program Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS, which is heavily underrated these days).

 

Should you enter the wrong character code, national characters and any semi-graphics will be displayed incorrectly. You get "weird characters" instead.