This is not the current version of the class.

Unicode

Character representation

Coding systems

Chappe semaphore, 1790s

Chappe semaphore

Reference

Braille alphabet, 1820s

Braille

Reference - Image reference

Japanese Braille, 1880s

Japanese braille

Reference - Image reference

Efficiency vs. representation

Telegraphy, 1930s

CCITT #2

Reference

BCDIC, 1930s

BCDIC

Reference

ASCII, 1960s

ASCII

Reference

MORE THAN 64 CHARACTERS!

MORE THAN 64 CHARACTERS!

Reference

America and the world

à â ç É é ê è î ô ù û £ ° § ¨
French (ISO-IR-025) @ N/A \ N/A { N/A } N/A N/A | N/A # [ ] ~
Canadian French #1 (ISO-IR-121) @ [ \ N/A { ] } ^ ` | ~ N/A N/A N/A N/A
Canadian French #2 (ISO-IR-122) @ [ \ ^ { ] } N/A ` | ~ N/A N/A N/A N/A

C

{ a[i] = '\n'; }

C?

ä aÄiÜ = n'; ü

…C?

??< a??(i??) = '??/n'; ??>

What about that 7th bit?

MORE THAN 128 CHARACTERS!

ISO 8859-1

Reference

ISO 8859

Ísland sigurinn

The panda in the room

Unicode: the dream

Unicode 1

Intense technical and social arguments

1

Have these people no shame?

This is what happens when a computing tradition that has never been able to move off ground-zero in associating 1 character to 1 glyph keeps grinding through the endless lists of variants, mistakes, rare, obsolete, nonce, idiosyncratic, and novel ideographs available through the millenia in East Asia.

2

I did not attend the meetings in which ISO 10646 was slowly turned into a de facto American industrial standard. I have read that the first person to broach the subject of "unifying" Chinese characters was a Canadian with links to the Unicode project. I have also read that the people looking out for Japan's interests are from a software house that produces word processors, Justsystem Corp. Most shockingly, I have read that the unification of Chinese characters is being conducted on the basis of the Chinese characters used in China, and that the organization pushing this project forward is a private company, not representatives of the Chinese government. … However, basic logic dictates that China should not be setting character standards for Japan, nor should Japan be setting character standards for China. Each country and/or region should have the right to set its own standard, and that standard should be drawn up by a non-commercial entity.

Unicode 2

UTF-16

UTF-8

Emoji