ASCII, Unicode, and In Between - new technical article

[Doug Kerr]

In the context of this forum, most of our concern with computer systems lies in image manipulation. But we as well are concerned with character-organized information in many ways - in visible annotations in images, in metadata, and of course in many housekeeping aspects of computer operation.

We encounter a bewildering repertoire of coded character sets - ASCII, several "extended ASCII" character sets (with various names and identifiers), and Unicode, as well as the various Unicode encoding schemes (such as UTF-8 and UTF-16).

I have recently posted on my technical information site, The Pumpkin, a new technical article, "ASCII, Unicode, and In Between", available here:

http://dougkerr.net/Pumpkin/Index.htm#ASCII_Unicode

It describes what these character sets (and encodings) are and aren't, where they came from, how they are related, and some of their implications on various of our activities. Included is information on one of the schemes used on Windows machines for the entry of characters not directly accessible from the keyboard.

Best regards,

Doug

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Originally Posted by Doug Kerr

In the context of this forum, most of our concern with computer systems lies in image manipulation. But we as well are concerned with character-organized information in many ways - in visible annotations in images, in metadata, and of course in many housekeeping aspects of computer operation.

We encounter a bewildering repertoire of coded character sets - ASCII, several "extended ASCII" character sets (with various names and identifiers), and Unicode, as well as the various Unicode encoding schemes (such as UTF-8 and UTF-16).

I have recently posted on my technical information site, The Pumpkin, a new technical article, "ASCII, Unicode, and In Between", available here:

http://dougkerr.net/Pumpkin/Index.htm#ASCII_Unicode

It describes what these character sets (and encodings) are and aren't, where they came from, how they are related, and some of their implications on various of our activities. Included is information on one of the schemes used on Windows machines for the entry of characters not directly accessible from the keyboard.

Hi Doug,

Thanks for your varied contributions.

Cheers,
Bart