The ANSI character set, developed by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), is a standardized set of characters used in the computer industry. It is also known as the Windows Code Page and is an 8-bit character set used mainly in Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows 98, which allows it to represent up to 256 characters. The character set includes ASCII, a subset with characters from 32 to 126 that represent displayable characters.
Although some ANSI character codes could not be displayed by Windows 95 or Windows 98 applications, they were widely used until replaced by Unicode. ANSI contains 218 characters, and it has the same numeric codes as the ASCII/Unicode formats.
Curated character sets created by standards committees allow for greater consistency and efficiency in service delivery, cross-platform development, and programming. In the case of the ANSI character set, these standards committees decided which types of linguistic and international characters to include. They also judged if a particular character could be effectively rendered by other characters, to avoid including code that might not be useful or simply unusable in practice.
FAQs
What is the difference between ANSI and ASCII?
ANSI and ASCII are two different character sets. ASCII is a subset of ANSI and includes only 128 characters, ranging from 0 to 127, while ANSI has 218 characters and can represent up to 256 characters.
What is the ANSI character set used for?
The ANSI character set is mainly used in Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows 98 and was created to provide uniform standards for the entire computer industry.
Why was UNICODE created to replace ANSI?
ANSI was replaced because it had a limited number of characters, making it difficult to represent all the world’s major languages. UNICODE was created to represent all modern languages and character sets used in electronic communication.
Conclusion
The ANSI character set was an essential part of the computer industry’s history, allowing for uniform standards to be created to suit various applications. While it was replaced by UNICODE, its impact is still felt today. By understanding the standards involved in character sets, programming and development, and service delivery can become more consistent and efficient.
