Computer Science – Text, sound and images | e-Consult
Text, sound and images (1 questions)
Characters are represented digitally using a numerical code. This code allows the computer to store, process, and display text. A character set is a collection of characters that a computer system can understand and use. Different character sets use different numbers of bits to represent each character.
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a character set that uses 7 bits to represent characters. This allows for 128 different characters to be represented (27 = 128). ASCII includes uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and control characters.
Advantages of ASCII:
- Simple and efficient for basic English text.
- Widely supported across different systems.
Disadvantages of ASCII:
- Limited character range – does not support characters from other languages (e.g., accented characters, Cyrillic, Chinese).
- Cannot represent symbols or special characters used in many modern applications.
Unicode is a character set that uses a variable number of bits (typically 8, 16, or 32) to represent characters. Unicode aims to include all characters from all languages. Common Unicode encodings include UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32.
Advantages of Unicode:
- Supports a vast range of characters from all languages.
- Allows for consistent text representation across different systems and platforms.
- Essential for modern applications that handle internationalized text.
Disadvantages of Unicode:
- Can be less efficient than ASCII for basic English text, as it requires more bits per character.
- Compatibility issues can arise if different systems use different Unicode encodings.