What Is Character Set

This section provides a quick introduction of some basic concepts like character set, coded character set, code point, character encoding.

What Is a Character Set? A character set is a collection of characters used in the a language, and/or symbols used in a symbolic system. Examples of character set: numeric numbers, alphabetical letters, and Chinese characters.

What Is a Coded Character Set? A coded character set is a character set in which each character has an assigned integral number. Examples of coded character set: US-ASCII, EBCDIC, ISO-8859-1, GB2312-1980, and Unicode. Note that:

What Is a Code Point? A code point is an integral number assigned to a character in a coded character set.

What Is a Character Encoding A character encoding is a map scheme between code points of a coded character set and sequences of bytes. Note that:

Table of Contents

 About This Book

Character Sets and Encodings

What Is Character Set

 Commonly Used 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

 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