Get current charset

[stefan-b-jakobsson]

Hi,

It would be nice if the Kernal had a function to retrieve the current charset, that is one of the following:

• PETSCII upper case/graphics
• PETSCII lower case/upper case
• ISO
• Custom

Briefly looking at the Kernal "prt" code at kernal/cbm/editor.s:498, it seems the value in memory address $0372 ("mode") is used to distinguish between PETSCII and ISO mode.

I cannot see any easy way to tell if PETSCII upper case/graphics or PETSCII lower case/upper case is active. Maybe the use of the mode value could be changed to tell those apart as well.

[mist64]

Can you describe a use case where you would need this?

[stefan-b-jakobsson]

I have this use case: X16 Edit doesn't change charset when started. It tries to detect the current charset and continue using it. This is nice to the user, who may continue working in the preferred charset without need to select it again.

For now, X16 Edit detects the current charset by reading and comparing tile data. This method is not very future proof, should the character definitions change for some reason.