"High ASCII" is a misnomer.  There is no standard for anything
above character 127.  Neither is there an ISO standard.
       That's the principal reason "high ASCII" is prohibited in
Fidonet echoes, since different computers and different programs
will display those characters differently.
       Your description of what happens with characters above
127 describes what is displayed on monitors that follow the
original IBM PC character set.  But many monitors display
different characters, and many programs have different
implementations of characters above 127 even on monitors
using the IBM set.
       My printer can be commanded to use 8 or 10 different
character sets.  And of course Apple has a different set of
characters above 127.
       There is no requirement that Fido users have IBM or
IBM-compatible computers.
       For personal Netmail via Fido, you can use any character
set you want.  But in echos only ASCII characters 0 to 127 are
permitted, since there are many diverse users and systems.
       Note there are no ASCII characters defined above 127.
ASCII stops at 127.
 -=> Quoting Day Brown to Sangeet Kr Gupta <=-
 DB> BTW: what is it that you see? on my screen I see what are commonly 
 DB> called 'hi-ASCII', and includes a number of symbols used in higher 
 DB> mathematics, and some Greek, Spanish, or French letters of the 
 DB> alphabet.  If this packet gets to you thru the internet, it will 
 DB> likely have the hi-bit stripped. 
 DB> 
 DB> The internet was started before the days of desktop comuters, and 
 DB> still uses a 7 bit data stream, whereas FIDO started with the use 
 DB> of the IBM PC which had an 8 bit keyboard, video rom, and com 
 DB> port algorythms... you log on at "8n1"? 
 DB> 
 DB> I have a little program, ANZI.COM, that changes to the 43 line EGA 
 DB> mode, and replaces the bitmaps of all this useless junk in english 
 DB> e-mail like this with a set of curve & diagonal line segments and 
 DB> blocks so you can make doodles and illustrate your e-mail here. 
 DB> 
 DB> Obviously, you cannot do this on the internet, as the high bit is 
 DB> stripped and the so-called 'Box characters' and my bitmaps are all 
 DB> converted into lower ascii which ends in "{|}~" and last, but not 
 DB> displayable, the code for 'delete' or backspace. 
 DB> 
 DB> So, does "n2X" look different to you or not? 
         It's just "n2X" on my monitor.
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