Character encoding - Revision history

DavidB4-bot: /* top */Spelling, grammar, and general cleanup, typos fixed: Therefore → Therefore,, a agreed-upon → an agreed-upon

2020-05-21T23:31:18Z

top: Spelling, grammar, and general cleanup, typos fixed: Therefore → Therefore,, a agreed-upon → an agreed-upon

DavidB4: adding one reference, for support. more are needed.

2020-03-19T21:55:48Z

adding one reference, for support. more are needed.

DavidB4: adding a category, and bolding title. This page needs some refs.

2020-03-19T21:54:26Z

adding a category, and bolding title. This page needs some refs.

Eac: New article

2020-01-19T07:16:23Z

New article

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The purpose of character encoding schemes is to provide a means of storing, retrieving, comparing, inputting, and outputting symbol glyphs such as letters, digits, and various symbols.

Computers represent data as a series of bits. Therefore any other representation of data (such as alphabetic characters) must derive from a agreed-upon interpretation (ie a "standard") of how those bits will be interpreted. Any such standard is essentially arbitrary, but certain standards for character encoding have emerged over the years. Since most modern computers deal with bytes (8-bit groupings), or multiples of bytes, most character encodings are defined at the byte level. There may, or may not, be a correlation between a given byte value and what character it represents in any given encoding scheme. For instance, a byte value of 1001110 represents the letter "N" in [[ASCII]], but the symbol "+" in EBCDIC.

The main character encoding standards today are [[ASCII]] (sometimes ambiguously referred to as "ANSI"), and [[Unicode]]. Older standards include EBCDIC, Baudot, and Radix-50.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 The purpose of '''character encoding''' schemes is to provide a means of storing, retrieving, comparing, inputting, and outputting symbol glyphs such as letters, digits, and various symbols.
-Computers represent data as a series of bits.  Therefore any other representation of data (such as alphabetic characters) must derive from a agreed-upon interpretation (ie a "standard") of how those bits will be interpreted.  Any such standard is essentially arbitrary, but certain standards for character encoding have emerged over the years.  Since most modern computers deal with bytes (8-bit groupings), or multiples of bytes, most character encodings are defined at the byte level.  There may, or may not, be a correlation between a given byte value and what character it represents in any given encoding scheme.  For instance, a byte value of 1001110 represents the letter "N" in [[ASCII]],<ref>https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/a/ascii.htm</ref> but the symbol "+" in EBCDIC.
+Computers represent data as a series of bits.  Therefore, any other representation of data (such as alphabetic characters) must derive from an agreed-upon interpretation (ie a "standard") of how those bits will be interpreted.  Any such standard is essentially arbitrary, but certain standards for character encoding have emerged over the years.  Since most modern computers deal with bytes (8-bit groupings), or multiples of bytes, most character encodings are defined at the byte level.  There may, or may not, be a correlation between a given byte value and what character it represents in any given encoding scheme.  For instance, a byte value of 1001110 represents the letter "N" in [[ASCII]],<ref>https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/a/ascii.htm</ref> but the symbol "+" in EBCDIC.
 The main character encoding standards today are [[ASCII]] (sometimes ambiguously referred to as "ANSI"), and [[Unicode]].  Older standards include EBCDIC, Baudot, and Radix-50.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 The purpose of '''character encoding''' schemes is to provide a means of storing, retrieving, comparing, inputting, and outputting symbol glyphs such as letters, digits, and various symbols.
-Computers represent data as a series of bits.  Therefore any other representation of data (such as alphabetic characters) must derive from a agreed-upon interpretation (ie a "standard") of how those bits will be interpreted.  Any such standard is essentially arbitrary, but certain standards for character encoding have emerged over the years.  Since most modern computers deal with bytes (8-bit groupings), or multiples of bytes, most character encodings are defined at the byte level.  There may, or may not, be a correlation between a given byte value and what character it represents in any given encoding scheme.  For instance, a byte value of 1001110 represents the letter "N" in [[ASCII]], but the symbol "+" in EBCDIC.
+Computers represent data as a series of bits.  Therefore any other representation of data (such as alphabetic characters) must derive from a agreed-upon interpretation (ie a "standard") of how those bits will be interpreted.  Any such standard is essentially arbitrary, but certain standards for character encoding have emerged over the years.  Since most modern computers deal with bytes (8-bit groupings), or multiples of bytes, most character encodings are defined at the byte level.  There may, or may not, be a correlation between a given byte value and what character it represents in any given encoding scheme.  For instance, a byte value of 1001110 represents the letter "N" in [[ASCII]],<ref>https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/a/ascii.htm</ref> but the symbol "+" in EBCDIC.
 The main character encoding standards today are [[ASCII]] (sometimes ambiguously referred to as "ANSI"), and [[Unicode]].  Older standards include EBCDIC, Baudot, and Radix-50.
 [[Category:Information Technology]]