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CHAPTER 4

Encoding Methods

In this chapter you will learn how the CCSes presented in Chapter 3 are encoded for use

on computer systems. e discussions in this chapter apply only to CCSes. at is, they

do not apply to NCSes, such as Japan’s Jōyō Kanji, Gakushū Kanji, Jinmei-yō Kanji, and

their predecessors. To recap what you learned early on in this book, encoding is simply

the mapping or assignment of a numeric value to a character.

Now that we are beginning to focus on encoding methods, you should expect to acquire a

complete understanding of a large number of encoding methods, and more importantly,

how they relate to and interoperate with each other. One important goal of this book will

then have been achieved. If you happen to absorb other information, that is also a good

thing. Otherwise, please treat much of this chapter as reference material, and consult it on

an as-needed basis, being sure to bookmark or dog-ear what you feel are key pages.

Factor in that the rst edition of this book was published at the end of 1998. At that time,

Unicode was not yet universally recognized, accepted, or implemented. Now it is safe to

state that Unicode’s encoding forms have become universally recognized and accepted as

the preferred encoding for text data. But, because interoperability with non-Unicode en-

codings continues to play an important role in today’s soware, you will still learn ...