Character set

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Simple character set

A character set is a set of elements, called characters , from which character strings can be put together. Such elements can include the letters of an alphabet , digits , but also other symbols , such as special characters , the characters of the phonetic transcription of the IPA code or Braille , pictograms of various types or control characters . A character set is less than a character code that must also contain a defined numbering of the characters in the character set. In this respect, the examples listed below, like ASCII, are strictly speaking a character code. In information technology , in addition to the defined character set, the numbering of the characters and thus a character code is required. In times of the Internet, the character codes used must be internationally standardized in order to ensure a smooth exchange of data. This pressure greatly reduces the earlier variety of character codes.

The graphic design of a character is called a character or glyph, that of the entire character set is called a font or sentence (English font), the rules of punctuation, punctuation rules .

Character sets in scientific formalisms

Typical character sets are:

Character sets for computer systems

Character encodings traditionally known in computer science are the ASCII and EBCDIC codes. However, the latter has lost a lot of its importance. Character sets with internationally necessary characters that go beyond English have increasingly come to the fore, e.g. B. related character sets according to ANSI and in particular the internationally recognized Unicode standard .

Surname introduction bit Code points displayable characters Norms first use
ASCII 1963 7th 128 95 ANSI X3.4-1968 Teletype ASR-33
EBCDIC 1964 8th 256 93 to 192 IBM mainframe
Unicode 1991 21st 1,114,112 120.737 (Unicode 8.0) ISO 10646 Xerox, Apple

Some of the characters in a character set are the characters that can be displayed . Their number is less than the total number of characters provided in the character set, as part of the character set is used for other purposes, for example as non-printable control characters.

The part of the computer hardware that makes the characters visible on a screen or on a plotter is called the character generator .

International character sets

Computer company fonts

National variants

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Character sets  - collection of images, videos, and audio files
Wiktionary: Character set  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations