Subj : Re: What is a text character in a computer? To : comp.programming From : Roger Willcocks Date : Mon Oct 03 2005 10:39 am "Thomas G. Marshall" wrote in message news:ip10f.14973$J03.1423@trndny05... > Roger Willcocks coughed up: >> Much confusion comes from the (mostly American) assumption that the >> mapping from binary number to character name is essentially fixed, > > No, "essentially fixed" is true. AFAICT, the most of the computing > universe still does seem to revolve around 7 or 8 bit ASCII. > Case proven, I believe. ASCII = _American_ standard code for information interchange. If what you are suggesting is that Microsoft revolves around 7 or 8 bit ASCII, see for example http://www.microsoft.com/OpenType/unicode/unicodecp.htm The current version (4.1) of the Unicode Standard, developed by the Unicode Consortium, assigns a unique identifier to each of 97,720 characters (increased from 96,447 in 4.0 and 95,221 in version 3.2), covering the scripts of the world's principal written languages and many mathematical and other symbols. (http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/). >> although even in that market there are both ascii and ebcdic >> encodings. > See http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html for some more background. -- Roger .