Subj : Re: What is a text character in a computer?
To   : comp.programming
From : Roger Willcocks
Date : Mon Oct 03 2005 12:26 am

<thenightfly@comcast.net> wrote in message 
news:1128265260.184168.271910@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>I know all about how binary numbers translate into text characters. My
> question is what exactly IS a text character? Is it a bitmap?
>

A text character in this context is a drawn shape that probably looks like a 
letter. But depending on the font you're indexing into, the same binary 
number could select a shape which looks like a blob, or looks like a chinese 
ideogram.

The Postscript language (as used in many printers) uses a two stage mapping 
from the binary number to what gets drawn. The first map (called the 'font 
encoding') uses the binary number to select a character name ('A' or '2' or 
'colon', for instance); the second map uses the character name to select a 
picture of the character.

Much confusion comes from the (mostly American) assumption that the mapping 
from binary number to character name is essentially fixed, although even in 
that market there are both ascii and ebcdic encodings.

--
Roger

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