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Article: Communicating globally: the advent of Unicode. (a new computer alphabet to replace ASCII)
- Article from:
- Computers in Libraries
- Article date:
- May 1, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Information Today, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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With the release of Windows NT, the computer world has taken the first step away from ASCII toward what is expected to become the universal alphabet for all computers: Unicode. At present, new software platforms offer varying degrees of support for Unicode; however, full support is not expected before the turn of the century.(1) Although this may seem the kind of arcane detail that librarians could safely ignore, Unicode has important implications for them and for all other computer users.
With the exception of IBM mainframes, which use an 8-bit encoding scheme called EBCDIC (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code), ASCII has become the standard for all data ...