JIS X0208 Character Code Values

This section provides a quick introduction of JIS X0208 character code values. Each character has a code of 2 bytes: high byte is row number plus 32 and low byte is column number plus 32.

The native code value of each JIS X0208 character contains 2 bytes. The first byte is called the high byte, containing the row number plus 32 (0x20); the second byte is called the low byte, containing the column number plus 32 (0x20). For example, if a character is located at row 16 and column 1, its high byte will be 16 + 32 = 48 (0x30), and log byte will be 1 + 32 = 33 (0x21). Put them together, its native code value will be 0x3021.

The reason to add 32 to each byte of the code value is that the resulting byte value can be represented by a printable ASCII character, between 0x21 and 0x7f. In another word, the code value of any JIS X0208 character is a combination of 2 printable ASCII characters.

Below is a picture showing the location area of JIS X0208 character code values on a 2-byte value map, modified from http://lfw.org/text/jp.html:

JIS X0208 Character Code Values
JIS X0208 Character Code Values

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 Character Sets and Encodings

 ASCII Character Set and Encoding

 GB2312 Character Set and Encoding

 GB18030 Character Set and Encoding

JIS X0208 Character Set and Encodings

 JIS X0208 Character Set for Japanese Characters

JIS X0208 Character Code Values

 EUC-JP Encoding

 ISO-2022-JP Encoding

 Shift-JIS Encoding

 Unicode Character Set

 UTF-8 (Unicode Transformation Format - 8-Bit)

 UTF-16, UTF-16BE and UTF-16LE Encodings

 UTF-32, UTF-32BE and UTF-32LE Encodings

 Python Language and Unicode Characters

 Java Language and Unicode Characters

 Character Encoding in Java

 Character Set Encoding Maps

 Encoding Conversion Programs for Encoded Text Files

 Using Notepad as a Unicode Text Editor

 Using Microsoft Word as a Unicode Text Editor

 Using Microsoft Excel as a Unicode Text Editor

 Unicode Fonts

 Archived Tutorials

 References

 Full Version in PDF/EPUB