characters, for example, are all pronounced "hex" in different
communities because various assemblers use them as a prefix tag for
hexadecimal constants (in particular, # in many assembler-programming
cultures, $ in the 6502 world, > at Texas Instruments, and & on the
BBC Micro, Sinclair, and some Z80 machines). See also [653]splat.

The inability of ASCII text to correctly represent any of the world's
other major languages makes the designers' choice of 7 bits look more
and more like a serious [654]misfeature as the use of international
networks continues to increase (see [655]software rot). Hardware and
software from the U.S. still tends to embody the assumption that ASCII
is the universal character set and that characters have 7 bits; this
is a major irritant to people who want to use a character set suited
to their own languages. Perversely, though, efforts to solve this
problem by proliferating `national' character sets produce an
evolutionary pressure to use a smaller subset common to all those in
use.
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Node:ASCII art, Next:[656]ASCIIbetical order, Previous:[657]ASCII,
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ASCII art n.

The fine art of drawing diagrams using the ASCII character set (mainly
|, -, /, \, and +). Also known as `character graphics' or `ASCII
graphics'; see also [659]boxology. Here is a serious example:
o----)||(--+--|<----+ +---------o + D O
L )||( | | | C U
A I )||( +-->|-+ | +-\/\/-+--o - T