Since the middle 1960s most computers have handled characters using either the 7-bit ASCII
or 8-bit EBCDIC character sets and representations. These codes were generally satisfactory for
English, less satisfactory for other European languages based on the Roman alphabet, and totally
unsuitable for East Asian languages. Various extensions filled the unused 128 characters of the
"8-bit" ASCII set or escaped into alternative alphabets using the ASCII "SO--Shift Out" and
"SI--Shift In" codes. But there were many such standards and they were generally messy and
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