SlideShare a Scribd company logo
ASCII and Unicode
Learning Outcomes
Terms
Outline
• ASCII Code
• Unicode system
– Discuss the Unicode’s main objective within
computer processing
• Computer processing before development of
Unicode
• Unicode vs. ASCII
• Different kinds of Unicode encodings
• Significance of Unicode in the modern world
From Bit & Bytes to ASCII
• Bytes can represent any
collection of items using a
“look-up table” approach
• ASCII is used to represent
characters
ASCII
American Standard Code for Information
Interchange
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII
ASCII
• It is an acronym for the American Standard Code for
Information Interchange.
• It is a standard seven-bit code that was first
proposed by the American National Standards
Institute or ANSI in 1963, and finalized in 1968 as
ANSI Standard X3.4.
• The purpose of ASCII was to provide a standard to
code various symbols ( visible and invisible symbols)
ASCII
• In the ASCII character set, each binary value
between 0 and 127 represents a specific
character.
• Most computers extend the ASCII character
set to use the full range of 256 characters
available in a byte. The upper 128 characters
handle special things like accented characters
from common foreign languages.
• In general, ASCII works by assigning standard
numeric values to letters, numbers,
punctuation marks and other characters such
as control codes.
• An uppercase "A," for example, is represented
by the decimal number 65."
Bytes: ASCII
• By looking at the ASCII table, you can clearly see a
one-to-one correspondence between each character
and the ASCII code used.
• For example, 32 is the ASCII code for a space.
• We could expand these decimal numbers out to
binary numbers (so 32 = 00100000), if we wanted to
be technically correct -- that is how the computer
really deals with things.
Bytes: ASCII
• Computers store text documents, both on disk and in
memory, using these ASCII codes.
• For example, if you use Notepad in Windows XP/2000 to
create a text file containing the words, "Four score and seven
years ago," Notepad would use 1 byte of memory per
character (including 1 byte for each space character between
the words -- ASCII character 32).
• When Notepad stores the sentence in a file on disk, the file
will also contain 1 byte per character and per space.
• Binary number is usually displayed as Hexadecimal to save
display space.
• Take a look at a file size now.
• Take a look at the space of your p drive
Bytes: ASCII
• If you were to look at the file as a computer
looks at it, you would find that each byte
contains not a letter but a number -- the
number is the ASCII code corresponding to the
character (see below). So on disk, the numbers
for the file look like this:
• F o u r a n d s e v e n
• 70 111 117 114 32 97 110 100 32 115 101 118
101 110
• Externally, it appears that human beings will use
natural languages symbols to communicate with
computer.
• But internally, computer will convert everything into
binary data.
• Then process all information in binary world.
• Finally, computer will convert binary information to
human understandable languages.
• When you type the letter A, the hardware
logic built into the keyboard automatically
translates that character into the ASCII code
65, which is then sent to the computer.
Similarly, when the computer sends the ASCII
code 65 to the screen, the letter A appears.
ascii
ASCII stands for American Standard Code for
Information Interchange
First published on October 6, 1960
ASCII is a type of binary data
Ascii part 2
ASCII is a character encoding scheme that
encodes 128 different characters into 7 bit
integers
Computers can only read numbers, so ASCII is
a numerical representation of special
characters
Ex: ‘%’ ‘!’ ‘?’
Ascii part 3
 ASCII code assigns a number
for each English character
 Each letter is assigned a
number from 0-127
 Ex: An uppercase ‘m’ has
the ASCII code of 77
 By 2007, ASCII was the most
commonly used character
encoding program on the
internet
(This is a funny picture)
• 01010100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100110
01110101 01101110 01101110 01111001 00100000 01110000 01101001 01100011 01110100 01110101 01110010
01100101
Large files
Large files can contain several megabytes
1,000,000 bytes are equivalent to one megabyte
Some applications on a computer may even
take up several thousand megabytes of data
revisit “char” data type
• In C, single characters are represented using
the data type char, which is one of the most
important scalar data types.
char achar;
achar=‘A’;
achar=65;
Character and integer
• A character and an integer (actually a small
integer spanning only 8 bits) are actually
indistinguishable on their own. If you want to
use it as a char, it will be a char, if you want to
use it as an integer, it will be an integer, as
long as you know how to use proper C++
statements to express your intentions.
• General Understanding of the Unicode System
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot3VKnP4
Mz0
What is Unicode?
• A worldwide character-encoding standard
• Its main objective is to enable a single,
unique character set that is capable of
supporting all characters from all scripts, as
well as symbols, that are commonly utilized
for computer processing throughout the
globe
• Fun fact: Unicode is capable of encoding
about at least 1,110,000 characters!
Before Unicode Began…
• During the 1960s, each letter or character was
represented by a number assigned from multiple
different encoding schemes used by the ASCII Code
• Such schemes included code pages that held as many
as 256 characters, with each character requiring about
eight bits of storage!
• Made it insufficient to manage character sets consisting
of thousands of characters such as Chinese and
Japanese characters
• Basically, character encoding was very limited in
how much it was capable of containing
• Also did not enable character sets of various languages
to integrate
The ASCII Code
• Acronym for the American Standard Code for Information
Interchange
• A computer processing code that represents English characters as
numbers, with each letter assigned a number from 0 to 127
– For instance, the ASCII code for uppercase M is 77
• The standard ASCII character set uses just 7 bits for each character
• Some larger character sets in ASCII code incorporate 8 bits, which
allow 128 additional characters used to represent non-English
characters, graphics symbols, and mathematical symbols
• ASCII vs Unicode
This depicts how Unicode is capable of
encoding characters from virtually
every kind of language
This indicates how
different characters
are organized into
representing a
unique character
set
This shows
how Unicode
can manipulate
the style and
size of each
character
This compares
what ASCII
and Unicode
are able to
encode
Various Unicode Encodings
Name UTF-8 UTF-16 UTF-16BE UTF-16LE UTF-32 UTF-32BE UTF-32LE
Smallest
code
point
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
Largest
code
point
10FFFF 10FFFF 10FFFF 10FFFF 10FFFF 10FFFF 10FFFF
Code unit
size
8 bits 16 bits 16 bits 16 bits 32 bits 32 bits 32 bits
Byte
order
N/A <BOM>
big-
endian
little-
endian
<BOM>
big-
endian
little-
endian
Fewest
bytes per
character
1 2 2 2 4 4 4
Most
bytes per
character
4 4 4 4 4 4 4
http://www.unicode.org/faq/utf_bom.html
http://emergent.unpythonic.net/01360162755
Unicode’s Growth Over Time
This graph shows the
number of defined code
points in Unicode from
its first release in 1991
to the present
ASCII vs Unicode
-Has 128 code
points, 0 through
127
-Can only encode
characters in 7 bits
-Can only encode
characters from
the English
language
-Has about
1,114,112 code
positions
-Can encode
characters in 16-
bits and more
-Can encode
characters from
virtually all kinds of
languages
-It is a superset of
ASCII
-Both
are
charact
er
codes
-The
128 first
code
position
s of
Unicod
e mean
the
same
as
ASCII
Method of Encoding
• Unicode Transformation Format (UTF)
– An algorithmic mapping from virtually every Unicode code point to
a unique byte sequence
– Each UTF is reversible, thus every UTF supports lossless round
tripping: mapping from any Unicode coded character sequence S to
a sequence of bytes and back will produce S again
– Most texts in documents and webpages is encoded using some of
the various UTF encodings
– The conversions between all UTF encodings are algorithmically
based, fast and lossless
• Makes it easy to support data input or output in multiple formats,
while using a particular UTF for internal storage or processing
Unicode Transformation
Format Encodings
• UTF-7
– Uses 7 bits for each character. It was designed to represent ASCII
characters in email messages that required Unicode encoding
– Not really used as often
• UTF-8
– The most popular type of Unicode encoding
– It uses one byte for standard English letters and symbols, two bytes
for additional Latin and Middle Eastern characters, and three bytes for
Asian characters
– Any additional characters can be represented using four bytes
– UTF-8 is backwards compatible with ASCII, since the first 128
characters are mapped to the same values
UTF Encodings (Cont…)
• UTF-16
– An extension of the "UCS-2" Unicode encoding, which uses at least two
bytes to represent about 65,536 characters
– Used by operating systems such as Java and Qualcomm BREW
• UTF-32
– A multi-byte encoding that represents each character with 4 bytes
• Makes it space inefficient
– Main use is in internal APIs where the data is single code points or glyphs,
rather than strings of characters
– Used on Unix systems sometimes for storage of information
What
can
Unicod
e be
Used
For?
Encode text for creation of
passwords
Encode characters used in
email settings
Encodes characters to display in all webpages
Modify characters used
in documents
Why is Unicode Important?
• By providing a unique set for each character, this systemized standard
creates a simple, yet efficient and faster way of handling tasks involving
computer processing
• Makes it possible for a single software product or a single website to be
designed for multiple countries, platforms, and languages
– Can reduce the cost over using legacy character sets
– No need for re-engineering!
• Unicode data can be utilized through a wide range of systems without the
risk of data corruption
• Unicode serves as a common point in the conversion of between other
character encoding schemes
– It is a superset of all of the other common character encoding schemes
• Therefore, it is possible to convert from one encoding scheme to
Unicode, and then from Unicode to the other encoding scheme.
Unicode in the Future…
• Unicode may be capable of encoding characters from
every language across the globe
• Can become the most dominant and resourceful tool in
encoding every kind of character and symbol
• Integrates all kinds of character encoding schemes into
its operations
Summary
Unicode’s ability to create a standard in which virtually
every character is represented through its complicated
operations has revolutionized the way computer processing is
handled today. It has emerged as an effective tool for processing
characters within computers, replacing old versions of character
encodings, such as the ASCII. Unicode’s capacity has
substantially grown since its development, and continues to
expand on its capability of encoding all kinds of characters and
symbols from every language across the globe. It will become a
necessary component of the technological advances that we will
inevitably continue to produce in the near future, potentially
creating new ways of encoding characters.
Pop Quiz!
1. What is the main purpose of the Unicode system?
-To enable a single, unique character set that is
capable of supporting all characters from all scripts and
symbols
2. How many code points is Unicode capable of
encoding?
-About 1,114,112 code points
References
• Cavalleri, Beshar Bahjat & Igor. Unicode 101: An Introduction to the Unicode Standard. 2014. Web. 17 09
2014. <http://www.interproinc.com/articles/unicode-101-introduction-unicode-standard>.
• Constable, Peter. Understanding Unicode. 13 06 2001. Web. 17 09 2014.
<http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=IWS-Chapter04a>.
• "UTF." Teach Terms. N.p., 20 Apr. 2012. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.
<http%3A%2F%2Fwww.techterms.com%2Fdefinition%2Futf>.
• "UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32 & BOM." FAQ. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.
<http://www.unicode.org/faq/utf_bom.html>.

More Related Content

PPT
PPTX
Ascii and Unicode (Character Codes)
PPTX
computercodes, BCD, EBCDIC,ASCII,UNICODE
PPTX
PPTX
What is Gray Code?
PPTX
1.1.2 HEXADECIMAL
PPTX
PDF
Arithmetic coding
Ascii and Unicode (Character Codes)
computercodes, BCD, EBCDIC,ASCII,UNICODE
What is Gray Code?
1.1.2 HEXADECIMAL
Arithmetic coding

What's hot (20)

PPT
Unicode
PDF
PPT
Ascii 03
PPT
Unicode Fundamentals
PPTX
Internet Protocol version 6
PDF
ITFT - DOS - Disk Operating System
PPT
Conversion of number system
PPTX
Bios vs uefi
PPT
Disk management
PPTX
Data representation
PPTX
Linux ppt
PDF
CS4109 Computer System Architecture
PPTX
Comparison of windows linux and mac os
PPT
Windows V/S Linux OS - Comparison
PPTX
Linux commands
PPTX
RISC-V Introduction
PDF
NTFS file system
PPTX
Number system
PPTX
IPv4 addressing and subnetting
Unicode
Ascii 03
Unicode Fundamentals
Internet Protocol version 6
ITFT - DOS - Disk Operating System
Conversion of number system
Bios vs uefi
Disk management
Data representation
Linux ppt
CS4109 Computer System Architecture
Comparison of windows linux and mac os
Windows V/S Linux OS - Comparison
Linux commands
RISC-V Introduction
NTFS file system
Number system
IPv4 addressing and subnetting
Ad

Similar to Lecture_ASCII and Unicode.ppt (20)

PPTX
ASCII and Unicode.pptx
PPTX
What character is that
PPTX
Topic 2.3 (1)
PDF
Abap slide class4 unicode-plusfiles
PDF
PDF
Unicode Encoding Forms
PPTX
...........................Assignment.pptx
PPTX
Understanding Character Encodings
PDF
UTF-8: The Secret of Character Encoding
PDF
The ASCII code used by most computers uses the last seven positions .pdf
PPTX
Character encoding standard(1)
PDF
Unicode Explained Includes Index 1st Ed Korpela Jukka K
DOCX
Chapter 2Hardware2.1 The System Unit2.2 Data and P
PDF
expect("").length.toBe(1)
PDF
Notes on a Standard: Unicode
PPTX
Data Representation class 11 computer.pptx
PDF
13001620124_AashishAgarwal_Data representation.text and numbers.pdf
ODP
Unicode
PPTX
Bits, bytes and characters
PDF
Unicode Primer for the Uninitiated
ASCII and Unicode.pptx
What character is that
Topic 2.3 (1)
Abap slide class4 unicode-plusfiles
Unicode Encoding Forms
...........................Assignment.pptx
Understanding Character Encodings
UTF-8: The Secret of Character Encoding
The ASCII code used by most computers uses the last seven positions .pdf
Character encoding standard(1)
Unicode Explained Includes Index 1st Ed Korpela Jukka K
Chapter 2Hardware2.1 The System Unit2.2 Data and P
expect("").length.toBe(1)
Notes on a Standard: Unicode
Data Representation class 11 computer.pptx
13001620124_AashishAgarwal_Data representation.text and numbers.pdf
Unicode
Bits, bytes and characters
Unicode Primer for the Uninitiated
Ad

Recently uploaded (20)

PDF
Optimiser vos workloads AI/ML sur Amazon EC2 et AWS Graviton
PDF
Machine learning based COVID-19 study performance prediction
PPTX
Effective Security Operations Center (SOC) A Modern, Strategic, and Threat-In...
DOCX
The AUB Centre for AI in Media Proposal.docx
PPTX
ACSFv1EN-58255 AWS Academy Cloud Security Foundations.pptx
PDF
Profit Center Accounting in SAP S/4HANA, S4F28 Col11
PDF
7 ChatGPT Prompts to Help You Define Your Ideal Customer Profile.pdf
PDF
TokAI - TikTok AI Agent : The First AI Application That Analyzes 10,000+ Vira...
PPTX
Spectroscopy.pptx food analysis technology
PDF
Diabetes mellitus diagnosis method based random forest with bat algorithm
PPTX
20250228 LYD VKU AI Blended-Learning.pptx
PPTX
Detection-First SIEM: Rule Types, Dashboards, and Threat-Informed Strategy
PDF
Advanced methodologies resolving dimensionality complications for autism neur...
PPTX
Programs and apps: productivity, graphics, security and other tools
PDF
Empathic Computing: Creating Shared Understanding
PPTX
KOM of Painting work and Equipment Insulation REV00 update 25-dec.pptx
PDF
Reach Out and Touch Someone: Haptics and Empathic Computing
PDF
Network Security Unit 5.pdf for BCA BBA.
PDF
Architecting across the Boundaries of two Complex Domains - Healthcare & Tech...
PDF
KodekX | Application Modernization Development
Optimiser vos workloads AI/ML sur Amazon EC2 et AWS Graviton
Machine learning based COVID-19 study performance prediction
Effective Security Operations Center (SOC) A Modern, Strategic, and Threat-In...
The AUB Centre for AI in Media Proposal.docx
ACSFv1EN-58255 AWS Academy Cloud Security Foundations.pptx
Profit Center Accounting in SAP S/4HANA, S4F28 Col11
7 ChatGPT Prompts to Help You Define Your Ideal Customer Profile.pdf
TokAI - TikTok AI Agent : The First AI Application That Analyzes 10,000+ Vira...
Spectroscopy.pptx food analysis technology
Diabetes mellitus diagnosis method based random forest with bat algorithm
20250228 LYD VKU AI Blended-Learning.pptx
Detection-First SIEM: Rule Types, Dashboards, and Threat-Informed Strategy
Advanced methodologies resolving dimensionality complications for autism neur...
Programs and apps: productivity, graphics, security and other tools
Empathic Computing: Creating Shared Understanding
KOM of Painting work and Equipment Insulation REV00 update 25-dec.pptx
Reach Out and Touch Someone: Haptics and Empathic Computing
Network Security Unit 5.pdf for BCA BBA.
Architecting across the Boundaries of two Complex Domains - Healthcare & Tech...
KodekX | Application Modernization Development

Lecture_ASCII and Unicode.ppt

  • 4. Outline • ASCII Code • Unicode system – Discuss the Unicode’s main objective within computer processing • Computer processing before development of Unicode • Unicode vs. ASCII • Different kinds of Unicode encodings • Significance of Unicode in the modern world
  • 5. From Bit & Bytes to ASCII • Bytes can represent any collection of items using a “look-up table” approach • ASCII is used to represent characters ASCII American Standard Code for Information Interchange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII
  • 6. ASCII • It is an acronym for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange. • It is a standard seven-bit code that was first proposed by the American National Standards Institute or ANSI in 1963, and finalized in 1968 as ANSI Standard X3.4. • The purpose of ASCII was to provide a standard to code various symbols ( visible and invisible symbols)
  • 7. ASCII • In the ASCII character set, each binary value between 0 and 127 represents a specific character. • Most computers extend the ASCII character set to use the full range of 256 characters available in a byte. The upper 128 characters handle special things like accented characters from common foreign languages.
  • 8. • In general, ASCII works by assigning standard numeric values to letters, numbers, punctuation marks and other characters such as control codes. • An uppercase "A," for example, is represented by the decimal number 65."
  • 9. Bytes: ASCII • By looking at the ASCII table, you can clearly see a one-to-one correspondence between each character and the ASCII code used. • For example, 32 is the ASCII code for a space. • We could expand these decimal numbers out to binary numbers (so 32 = 00100000), if we wanted to be technically correct -- that is how the computer really deals with things.
  • 10. Bytes: ASCII • Computers store text documents, both on disk and in memory, using these ASCII codes. • For example, if you use Notepad in Windows XP/2000 to create a text file containing the words, "Four score and seven years ago," Notepad would use 1 byte of memory per character (including 1 byte for each space character between the words -- ASCII character 32). • When Notepad stores the sentence in a file on disk, the file will also contain 1 byte per character and per space. • Binary number is usually displayed as Hexadecimal to save display space.
  • 11. • Take a look at a file size now. • Take a look at the space of your p drive
  • 12. Bytes: ASCII • If you were to look at the file as a computer looks at it, you would find that each byte contains not a letter but a number -- the number is the ASCII code corresponding to the character (see below). So on disk, the numbers for the file look like this: • F o u r a n d s e v e n • 70 111 117 114 32 97 110 100 32 115 101 118 101 110
  • 13. • Externally, it appears that human beings will use natural languages symbols to communicate with computer. • But internally, computer will convert everything into binary data. • Then process all information in binary world. • Finally, computer will convert binary information to human understandable languages.
  • 14. • When you type the letter A, the hardware logic built into the keyboard automatically translates that character into the ASCII code 65, which is then sent to the computer. Similarly, when the computer sends the ASCII code 65 to the screen, the letter A appears.
  • 15. ascii ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange First published on October 6, 1960 ASCII is a type of binary data
  • 16. Ascii part 2 ASCII is a character encoding scheme that encodes 128 different characters into 7 bit integers Computers can only read numbers, so ASCII is a numerical representation of special characters Ex: ‘%’ ‘!’ ‘?’
  • 17. Ascii part 3  ASCII code assigns a number for each English character  Each letter is assigned a number from 0-127  Ex: An uppercase ‘m’ has the ASCII code of 77  By 2007, ASCII was the most commonly used character encoding program on the internet
  • 18. (This is a funny picture) • 01010100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100110 01110101 01101110 01101110 01111001 00100000 01110000 01101001 01100011 01110100 01110101 01110010 01100101
  • 19. Large files Large files can contain several megabytes 1,000,000 bytes are equivalent to one megabyte Some applications on a computer may even take up several thousand megabytes of data
  • 20. revisit “char” data type • In C, single characters are represented using the data type char, which is one of the most important scalar data types. char achar; achar=‘A’; achar=65;
  • 21. Character and integer • A character and an integer (actually a small integer spanning only 8 bits) are actually indistinguishable on their own. If you want to use it as a char, it will be a char, if you want to use it as an integer, it will be an integer, as long as you know how to use proper C++ statements to express your intentions.
  • 22. • General Understanding of the Unicode System • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot3VKnP4 Mz0
  • 23. What is Unicode? • A worldwide character-encoding standard • Its main objective is to enable a single, unique character set that is capable of supporting all characters from all scripts, as well as symbols, that are commonly utilized for computer processing throughout the globe • Fun fact: Unicode is capable of encoding about at least 1,110,000 characters!
  • 24. Before Unicode Began… • During the 1960s, each letter or character was represented by a number assigned from multiple different encoding schemes used by the ASCII Code • Such schemes included code pages that held as many as 256 characters, with each character requiring about eight bits of storage! • Made it insufficient to manage character sets consisting of thousands of characters such as Chinese and Japanese characters • Basically, character encoding was very limited in how much it was capable of containing • Also did not enable character sets of various languages to integrate
  • 25. The ASCII Code • Acronym for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange • A computer processing code that represents English characters as numbers, with each letter assigned a number from 0 to 127 – For instance, the ASCII code for uppercase M is 77 • The standard ASCII character set uses just 7 bits for each character • Some larger character sets in ASCII code incorporate 8 bits, which allow 128 additional characters used to represent non-English characters, graphics symbols, and mathematical symbols • ASCII vs Unicode
  • 26. This depicts how Unicode is capable of encoding characters from virtually every kind of language This indicates how different characters are organized into representing a unique character set This shows how Unicode can manipulate the style and size of each character This compares what ASCII and Unicode are able to encode
  • 27. Various Unicode Encodings Name UTF-8 UTF-16 UTF-16BE UTF-16LE UTF-32 UTF-32BE UTF-32LE Smallest code point 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 Largest code point 10FFFF 10FFFF 10FFFF 10FFFF 10FFFF 10FFFF 10FFFF Code unit size 8 bits 16 bits 16 bits 16 bits 32 bits 32 bits 32 bits Byte order N/A <BOM> big- endian little- endian <BOM> big- endian little- endian Fewest bytes per character 1 2 2 2 4 4 4 Most bytes per character 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 http://www.unicode.org/faq/utf_bom.html
  • 28. http://emergent.unpythonic.net/01360162755 Unicode’s Growth Over Time This graph shows the number of defined code points in Unicode from its first release in 1991 to the present
  • 29. ASCII vs Unicode -Has 128 code points, 0 through 127 -Can only encode characters in 7 bits -Can only encode characters from the English language -Has about 1,114,112 code positions -Can encode characters in 16- bits and more -Can encode characters from virtually all kinds of languages -It is a superset of ASCII -Both are charact er codes -The 128 first code position s of Unicod e mean the same as ASCII
  • 30. Method of Encoding • Unicode Transformation Format (UTF) – An algorithmic mapping from virtually every Unicode code point to a unique byte sequence – Each UTF is reversible, thus every UTF supports lossless round tripping: mapping from any Unicode coded character sequence S to a sequence of bytes and back will produce S again – Most texts in documents and webpages is encoded using some of the various UTF encodings – The conversions between all UTF encodings are algorithmically based, fast and lossless • Makes it easy to support data input or output in multiple formats, while using a particular UTF for internal storage or processing
  • 31. Unicode Transformation Format Encodings • UTF-7 – Uses 7 bits for each character. It was designed to represent ASCII characters in email messages that required Unicode encoding – Not really used as often • UTF-8 – The most popular type of Unicode encoding – It uses one byte for standard English letters and symbols, two bytes for additional Latin and Middle Eastern characters, and three bytes for Asian characters – Any additional characters can be represented using four bytes – UTF-8 is backwards compatible with ASCII, since the first 128 characters are mapped to the same values
  • 32. UTF Encodings (Cont…) • UTF-16 – An extension of the "UCS-2" Unicode encoding, which uses at least two bytes to represent about 65,536 characters – Used by operating systems such as Java and Qualcomm BREW • UTF-32 – A multi-byte encoding that represents each character with 4 bytes • Makes it space inefficient – Main use is in internal APIs where the data is single code points or glyphs, rather than strings of characters – Used on Unix systems sometimes for storage of information
  • 33. What can Unicod e be Used For? Encode text for creation of passwords Encode characters used in email settings Encodes characters to display in all webpages Modify characters used in documents
  • 34. Why is Unicode Important? • By providing a unique set for each character, this systemized standard creates a simple, yet efficient and faster way of handling tasks involving computer processing • Makes it possible for a single software product or a single website to be designed for multiple countries, platforms, and languages – Can reduce the cost over using legacy character sets – No need for re-engineering! • Unicode data can be utilized through a wide range of systems without the risk of data corruption • Unicode serves as a common point in the conversion of between other character encoding schemes – It is a superset of all of the other common character encoding schemes • Therefore, it is possible to convert from one encoding scheme to Unicode, and then from Unicode to the other encoding scheme.
  • 35. Unicode in the Future… • Unicode may be capable of encoding characters from every language across the globe • Can become the most dominant and resourceful tool in encoding every kind of character and symbol • Integrates all kinds of character encoding schemes into its operations
  • 36. Summary Unicode’s ability to create a standard in which virtually every character is represented through its complicated operations has revolutionized the way computer processing is handled today. It has emerged as an effective tool for processing characters within computers, replacing old versions of character encodings, such as the ASCII. Unicode’s capacity has substantially grown since its development, and continues to expand on its capability of encoding all kinds of characters and symbols from every language across the globe. It will become a necessary component of the technological advances that we will inevitably continue to produce in the near future, potentially creating new ways of encoding characters.
  • 37. Pop Quiz! 1. What is the main purpose of the Unicode system? -To enable a single, unique character set that is capable of supporting all characters from all scripts and symbols 2. How many code points is Unicode capable of encoding? -About 1,114,112 code points
  • 38. References • Cavalleri, Beshar Bahjat & Igor. Unicode 101: An Introduction to the Unicode Standard. 2014. Web. 17 09 2014. <http://www.interproinc.com/articles/unicode-101-introduction-unicode-standard>. • Constable, Peter. Understanding Unicode. 13 06 2001. Web. 17 09 2014. <http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=IWS-Chapter04a>. • "UTF." Teach Terms. N.p., 20 Apr. 2012. Web. 13 Nov. 2014. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.techterms.com%2Fdefinition%2Futf>. • "UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32 & BOM." FAQ. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2014. <http://www.unicode.org/faq/utf_bom.html>.