Character Sets(1.4.1 j)

Question 1

What is encoding?

Answer 1

form of coding to make binary stored on computers readable to humans

Question 2

ASCII

Answer 2

7 or 8 bit encoding per character
covers basic characters common symbols and special characters
originally 7 bit exceeded to 8 to improve range
only covers 255 characters primarily from western alphabet

Question 3

Unicode

Answer 3

developed to include worldwide characters
family of variable length(1 to 4 byte) encodings developed
UTF-8 most common, UTF-16 and UTF-32 used far less

Question 4

Unicode and ASCII

Answer 4

first 128 values of unicode match ASCII for backwards compatibility