ASCII Tables: why top to bottom?

Factual Questions
1

I find I am unsatisfied with versions of ASCII tables I have found on the web and in books, because they are never complete and readable enough. So I want to make my own.

It seems obvious to make it read left to right, then down a line, the way text or a periodic table of the elements works. But the several ASCII tables I have found that have rows and columns (corresponding to MSB and LSB) make columns correspond to MSB and rows correspond to LSB so that you read top to bottom down the left column, then move over one to the right and read the next column. Can anyone see a reason to do it this way? Or is it meaningless convention?

2

Next you’re going to tell us how you prefer the wine glass to be placed to the left of the plate :eek:
Civilization may not crumble, but you are contemplating defiance of a standard that’s been in place for over twenty years.

3

You really need two tables, one to from ASCII to text and one to go from text to ASCII code.

The table you describe sounds like the ASCII to text table version. The text to ASCII table would be alphabetical, although I do not know where you would go to find the order of all the punctuation symbols…

But, as you are making it your own, you can make it any way you think looks good.

4

oops,

You really need two tables, one to GO from…

5

Napier, you can make your own, you know? I often make my own tables, calendars, etc. when the ones I see ready-made do not satisfy me.

6

He is going to make his own.

7

But the table DOES work the way you want, if you read LSB first. It boils down to whether your internal thinking is “big endian” or “little endian” when performing this lookup.

It seems reasonably natural to me as it produces the numerical
values in order, left to right, row by row:

0, 1, … 7
8, 9, … F

etc. That was probably the thinking of they person who first produced such a table. If MSB ran across the top, the numeric
values would be out of order when read as ordinary text.

8

“You really need two tables, one to from ASCII to text and one to go from text to ASCII code.”

Eh? How’s that? ASCII codes are applied to letters in alphabetical order, though uppercase and lowercase are offset aways. Digits also get ASCII codes in order. The punctuation is hard to order, though ASCII codes are one of the best suggestions of how to order them. So, aren’t these two tables the same?

“contemplating defiance of a standard that’s been in place for over twenty years”
Yes, I suppose, though this seems to put it pretty strongly. Understand, I don’t propose to change ASCII codes, only to organize them into a table for visually looking things up. BTW I don’t drink wine.