* Patrick Durusau
|
| Current definition: A collection of elements used to represent
| textual information.
This one isn't wrong, but I think it's too vague. The TechWeb one is
OK, but the FOLDOC one is just wrong.
How about this:
A set of abstract characters with an integer value for each
character, which is used to represent it. An abstract character
corresponds closely to the common-sense concept of a letter, but
also includes punctuation, digits, whitespace, and other special
symbols. Abstract characters are independent of any specific visual
design, which is left for fonts to provide.
If we want more information we can add this:
The integer values are usually chosen to allow character sequences
to be efficiently encoded as a sequence of bytes, and to ensure that
the resulting sequences have desirable byte signatures, especially
in order to ensure compatibility with other character sets and
encodings.
Reactions? The biggest issue is perhaps whether this is at all
understandable. :)
--
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
GSM: +47 98 21 55 50 <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >
