To understand the implications of this size allowance, think back to how ASCII only supports 128 characters. Each character can be up to 4 bytes in size.
Unicode provides each character with a unique number (think of it as the character’s ID) such that regardless of the platform or device on which the language is used, the character remains readily defined. In the case of character encodings, your computer assigns a number to each of the characters included in the Character Encoding Standard. How it WorksĪs we mentioned earlier, your computer speaks the language of numbers, specifically binary code. These variants are linked to their equivalent normal alphabet so your computer knows exactly what to replace (and with what characters) when you select “Times New Roman” for example. Actually, among the hundreds of characters that constitute your Unicode text specifications exist variants of your current alphabet. Those fancy, artsy looking characters that replace the bland, boring-looking default text are also a part of the specifications of your unicode text. To toy around with the idea, imagine what really happens when you change the font in a document.
Essentially, Unicode text is capable of unambiguously representing any character, punctuation mark, diacritic from any of the world’s known and written languages. True to Unicode’s advantage, ASCII supports only 128 characters. Unlike ASCII, which was built around the English Language alone, Unicode was designed with the intent of representing symbols and characters from languages from all around the globe, with a support of about 1,000,000,000 different characters. Above, we highlighted the more compact encoding standards of the past, a popular one being ASCII.
It specifies how characters are represented in text files, online webpages and many other types of documents. Unicode is a Universal Character Encoding Standard.
0 kommentar(er)
