Refers to text input character sets such as Unicode or ASCII.
What Questions Should Have This Tag?:
Questions include:
- Questions about the character sets in Ubuntu, using them, installing them, etc.
Basic Definitions:
Character Encoding - In computing, a character encoding is used to represent a repertoire of characters by some kind of an encoding system.
Brief Introduction To The Subject:
In computer science, the terms "character encoding", "character map", "character set" and "code page" were historically synonymous, as the same standard would specify a repertoire of characters and how they were to be encoded into a stream of code units – usually with a single character per code unit. The terms now have related but distinct meanings, reflecting the efforts of standards bodies to use precise terminology when writing about and unifying many different encoding systems. Regardless, the terms are still used interchangeably, with character set being nearly ubiquitous.
