Motives For Extending
Because the number of symbols (or glyphs) used in common natural languages as well as in mathematics (· × ÷ ≠ ≥ ≈ π etc) and many programming languages and technical applications far exceeds the 96 (128-32) printable ASCII codes, many extensions to it have been used. Markets for computers and communication equipment outside English-speaking countries were historically open long before standards bodies had time to deliberate upon the best way to accommodate them, so there are many incompatible proprietary extensions to ASCII.
Since ASCII is a seven-bit code and most computers manipulate data in eight-bit bytes, many extensions use the additional 128 codes available by using all eight bits of each byte. This helps include many languages otherwise not easily representable in ASCII, but is still not enough to cover all languages of countries in which computers are sold, so even these eight-bit extensions had to have local variants.
Read more about this topic: Extended ASCII
Famous quotes containing the words motives and/or extending:
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—David Hume (1711–1776)
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