Joel on Software explains Unicode and character sets. There is something about his tone that usually turns me off (probably it's that he knows more than I do!) but he also writes some really informative articles. I've been wanting someone to explain this whole mess, and he has done a great job. Thanks!
Sort of geeky programmer stuff, but might be interesting to others as well. How exactly is text stored in a computer?But still, most people just pretended that a byte was a character and a character was 8 bits and as long as you never moved a string from one computer to another, or spoke more than one language, it would sort of always work. But of course, as soon as the Internet happened, it became quite commonplace to move strings from one computer to another, and the whole mess came tumbling down. Luckily, Unicode had been invented....
Unicode was a brave effort to create a single character set that included every reasonable writing system on the planet and some make-believe ones like Klingon, too. His insistence that "There Ain't No Such Thing As Plain Text" is a real mind blower. I mean, of course, but it had never really sunk in before.
any clue how the klingon keyboard layout looks like? i've been looking for a klingon or klingon pro keyboard layout for os x... (and i don't even know how klingon looks like written).
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Sort of geeky programmer stuff, but might be interesting to others as well. How exactly is text stored in a computer?His insistence that "There Ain't No Such Thing As Plain Text" is a real mind blower. I mean, of course, but it had never really sunk in before.
- jim 10-16-2003 7:50 pm
any clue how the klingon keyboard layout looks like? i've been looking for a klingon or klingon pro keyboard layout for os x... (and i don't even know how klingon looks like written).
- anna (guest) 4-11-2005 12:44 pm