ENCODING

SCHEMES
 WHAT IS ENCODING?
• Converting data (numbers,
alphabets, symbols, spaces,
graphics etc) into binary
codes.
A Cipher Is A Method Of
• The mechanism of converting Converting Regular Text Into A
data into an equivalent cipher Coded Form To Hide Its Meaning
And Protect It From Unauthorized
using specific code is called Access. This Process Is Called
as ENCODING. Encryption.
WHY ENCODING?

• Platform independency
• Internationalization
• Security
• Effective communication
POPULAR ENCODING SCHEMES

• ASCII
• ISCII
• UNICODE
 ASCII
Before the existence of
ASCII, every computer
manufacturer used their own
way of character encoding,
making it impossible to
communicate when you use
two machines from different
manufacturers.
 ASCII (AMERICAN STANDARD CODE FOR
INFORMATION INTERCHANGE
• Began in 1960.
• Standard common way to encode and represent keys of
keyboard understood by every computer.
• Uses 7-bit code to represent any character.
• It represents total of 27 = 128 characters.
• It can represent (encode) character set of English language
only.
 ASCII
So for the understanding purpose, you can divide the
ASCII table into three main parts:
•0 to 31 and 127: Control characters (used for keys like

backspace, escape, etc.)

•32 to 126: Printable characters (which you mostly use

for typing and basic tasks).

•128 to 255: Extended ASCII.
• Example Encode the word DATA and convert the encoded value into
binary values which can be understood by a computer.
• ASCII value of D is 68 and its equivalent 7-bit binary code =
1000100
• ASCII value of A is 65 and its equivalent 7-bit binary code =
1000001
• ASCII value of T is 84 and its equivalent 7-bit binary code = 1010100
• ASCII value of DA is 65 and
A T A
its equivalent 7-bit binary code =
ASCII Code 68 65 84 65
1000001
Binary 1000100 1000001 1010100 1000001
Code
ISCII - Indian
Script Code for
Information
Interchange
ISCII stands for Indian Script Code for
Information Interchange. It was
developed in India to standardize the
representation of Indian scripts in
computers. ISCII is a character
encoding standard that allows
AS

computers to store, process, and

display text in various Indian
The Need for ISCII
India has a rich linguistic diversity with numerous languages and scripts.
Before ISCII, there was no standard way to represent these scripts in computers.
This led to difficulties in exchanging information and processing data.

1 Lack of 2 Interoperability 3 Limited Language

Standardization Issues Support
Different computer Data could not be Only a few languages
systems used easily shared were supported on
different codes to between different most computers.
represent the same systems.
characters.
ISCII
• It consists of 256
characters.
• The first 128 characters
are the same as the
ASCII coding.
• The characters from
128-255 are the
characters of different
AS

Indian languages.
 ISCII
• All the characters resemble
very closely to each other in
terms of phonetics.
Therefore, only a certain
number of common character
set was sufficient for
covering several Indian
languages.
AS
The Development of ISCII
ISCII was developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) in India.

The development process involved collaboration with experts from different

organizations and institutions.

1 1986
Initial development of ISCII began.

2 1989
The first version of ISCII was released.

3 1990s
Further revisions and enhancements to ISCII were made.
Features of ISCII
ISCII was designed to be comprehensive and flexible.

It included a wide range of characters to support all major Indian scripts.

Character Set Code Page Language Support

ISCII defines a character ISCII uses a code page to ISCII supports a wide
set that includes all the map each character to a range of Indian
letters, digits, unique numerical value. languages, including
punctuation marks, and Hindi, Bengali, Marathi,
symbols used in Indian and Tamil.
languages.
Evolution and Successor
Standards
As technology advanced, newer standards emerged to address the limitations of ISCII.

The Unicode standard became the preferred character encoding system for
representing a wide range of languages.

ISCII
Limited character set, primarily for Indian scripts.

Unicode
Comprehensive character set, supporting thousands of languages.
The Birth of Unicode
In the early days of
computing, different
languages were
represented using
different encoding
schemes. These schemes
AS

were incompatible,
meaning text created
using one scheme could
The Challenge of Encoding
Every language uses its own unique set of characters.

Different encoding schemes were developed to represent these

characters, but they lacked a universal standard.

ASCII ISCII Shift-JIS

Developed for Developed for Indian Scripts
Developed for
English and other Japanese language.
Western European
languages.
The Need for a Universal Standard
The lack of a universal standard created communication barriers.

Text could not be shared or displayed correctly across different systems.

1 Compatibility 2 Consistency 3 Global Reach

Enable text to be Ensure that Support a wide
exchanged characters are range of languages
between different displayed uniformly and writing
platforms and across different systems.
applications. devices.
Unicode
It has been developed to represent all the
characters of every written language of the
world

It can represent about 1,000,000 characters.

It may be 8-bit, 16–bit or 32- bit.

UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 are some common

Unicode encodings.
(Unicode Transformation Format)
Unicode: A Global Standard
Today, Unicode is used by almost every computer system.
It has become the foundation for modern text processing and communication.

Web Browsers
Displaying web pages with text in different languages.

Operating Systems
Handling text input and output for users.

Mobile Devices
Sending and receiving messages, using apps, and browsing the web.

Software Applications
Creating and editing documents, spreadsheets, presentations.
Unicode in Action
You use Unicode every day, even if you don't realize it.

Whenever you type, send a message, or browse the web, Unicode is working behind the

Text Processing Mobile Communication Internationalization

Every time you type a Unicode allows you to Unicode makes it
character, Unicode send and receive text possible for websites and
converts it to its messages, including applications to support
corresponding code emojis. multiple languages.
point.
The Future of Unicode
Unicode is constantly evolving, adding new characters to support new languages
and writing systems.

The Unicode Consortium continues to develop and maintain this standard,

ensuring its relevance for the future of digital communication.

Expansion Customization
Adding new characters for Developing new features to meet
emerging languages and scripts. the needs of specific industries
and applications.

Security
Addressing security concerns related to character encoding and text processing.