What is Character Set?
| Standard Collection of Characters |
|
A standard collection of characters. A character set may include letters, digits, punctuation, control codes, graphics, mathematical symbols, and other signs. Each character in the set is represented by a unique character code, which is a binary number used for storage and transmission. OEM 8-bit characters Back in the DOS days, separate Original Equipment Manufacturer code pages were created so that text-mode PCs could display and print line-drawing characters. They're still used today for direct FAT access, and for accessing data files created by MS-DOS based applications. OEM code pages typically have a 3-digit label, such as CP 437 for American English. The emphasis with OEM code pages was linedraw characters. It was a good idea at the time, since the standard video for the original IBM PC was a monochrome text card with 2k RAM, connected to an attractive green monitor. However the drawing characters took up a lot of space in the 256 character map, leaving very little room for international characters. Since each hardware OEM was free to set their own character standards, some situations continue today where characters can be scrambled or lost even within the same language, if two OEM code pages have different character code points. For example a few characters were mapped differently between Russian MS-DOS and Russian IBM PC-DOS, so data movement is unreliable, or software has to be written to map between each special case. Users aren't going to suddently erase all their old data and reformat all their disks. The raw data and FAT filenames created with OEM code pages will be around for a long time. |
Beginner's Help
BUG Club Home
