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[Terrence M. Brannon]

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From: address@hidden (Paul K. McKneely)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: PhiText: Advanced Text Encoding for Programming
Date: 1 Nov 1995 20:03:35 GMT
Organization: technoVenture
Lines: 82
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <address@hidden>
Reply-To: address@hidden
NNTP-Posting-Host: hou01.onramp.net


                              What is PhiText?

     ASCII has been used for many years and is still heavily used today. 
It defines only 95 Displayable Characters and 33 Control Codes.  
Development for a new standard called UNICODE began back in 1988 to 
accomodate a much larger character set for the Desktop Publishing 
industry.  It does not address many issues that are of great importance in 
programming.  Where ASCII uses a 7-bit Symbol Code, UNICODE uses a 16-bit 
Symbol Code for a total of over 64 thousand symbols.  This is much too 
large and cumbersome for efficient programming purposes.  

     Development of another text convention called PhiText also began in 
1988.  PhiText uses a much more economical 11-bit Symbol Code.  This 
allows for a total of 1536 possible Displayable Symbols, roughly 16 times 
as large as ASCII.  It is large enough to accomodate advanced programming 
languages and small enough to view all of the symbols on the screen at 
once.  Also, PhiText defines an additional (optional) 21 bits to record 
Symbol Properties bringing the expanded "Flat Character" to 32 bits. These 
Symbol Properties accommodate Text Scaling, Text Style (i.e. Fonts), Text 
Color (both Foreground and Background), and five Visual Attributes (Bold, 
Flash/Italic, Hidden, Reverse Image, and Underscore).  These 32-bit "Flat 
Characters" can easily be manipulated by processors such as the Motorola 
68000 but they can potentially require a lot of storage.  The PhiText 
convention includes an encoding method called "Byte Stream Encoding".  
Using this technique, PhiText Files can be stored in less space than their 
ASCII equivalents.  PhiText Byte Stream Encoding uses a sensible 
compromise between simplicity, efficiency, and the ability to recover from 
potential data loss due to transmission and storage errors.  It also 
serves as an intermediate form of text storage that permits compatibility 
between Big-Endian and Little-Ending computer architectures.  UNICODE 
offers no such features. 

                       What is PhiText being used for?

     PhiText was designed to meet a wide variety of text applications for 
programming purposes.  I can't properly spell "PhiText" in ASCII because 
the "Phi" is actually the capitolized Greek letter.  The EICN (Excellence 
In Computing Network) is currently developing advanced software tools 
based on PhiText.  These tools currently run on an IBM PC/AT or better 
with a standard VGA card.  They allow you to view the character set and 
even design new symbols for video display.  To create documents we are 
using PhiEdit.  

     A new operating system called "PhiOS" is also under development 
(since 1990).  PhiText will be its native text format.  Targeted by the 
new OS is the Motorola 680X0 family of micro-processors (also known as the 
68K).  An assembler/linker/downloader toolset supporting PhiText is now in 
use to provide developers with an economical means to participate in this 
new technology.  PhiOS's Kernel (called PhiKernel) is written in 100% 
assembly language for compactness, speed, and efficiency.  It uses a micro-
kernel architecture to support embedded applications as well as general 
purpose pre-emptive multi-tasking desktop applications.  PhiOS will run on 
all family members from the 68000 to the 68060.  This will provide a 100-
fold range in the cost/performance spectrum.  

                         Who should get involved?

     Participation in the development process is open to the public via 
news group <comp.sys.m68k>.  The subject of all posts should be preceded 
with the prefix in the format "EICN: subject_goes_here".  Currently, 
membership in the Developer's Group is by invitation only.  Please 
understand that this is not meant to exclude the public but it is 
necessary if we are to maintain a technological advantage over big multi-
billion dollar monopolies.  Large companies do not give us their 
technology so why should we give them ours?  (We believe that even 
programmers deserve to eat).  We at the EICN are excited about our new 
alternative to the low quality in system software currently offered by 
multi-billion dollar companies that have traditionally dominated the 
market.  

                      I am interested in participation

     If you are a tools developer and you would like to inquire about 
participating in the next great leap in system software, you may contact:  

  Paul K. McKneely--technoVenture
    address@hidden
  David Lindauer--LAD
    address@hidden