SEC (1.4) Representing Information as bit patterns

Representing Text: The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) adapted the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) This code uses 7 bits to represent the alphabets (a-z & A-Z) and numbers from 0 to 9 and punctuation symbols. Ex: olleH

Unicode: This code uses 16 bits represents each symbols. Unicode consists of different bit patterns enough to allow text written in such languages A file containing a long sequence of symbols encoded using ASCII or Unicode is often called a text file

The difference between word processors and text file as follows: Word processorsText file Use word applicationUse text editor 1 Contains numbers proprietary codes representing changes in fonts, alignment information, …etc Contains only character-by- character encoding of text 2 Use proprietary code rather than the ASCII or Unicode Use ASCII or Unicode 3