Character Encoding Standards and Limitations

The video tutorial explores character encoding, focusing on ASCII, its history, and its limitations. ASCII encodes 95 printable and 33 control characters using 7 bits. Extensions emerged to utilize the 8th bit, initially for error checking, later for expanding character representation. The video highlights the confusion caused by different code pages in extended ASCII and introduces Unicode as a solution for encoding languages with thousands of characters. The tutorial concludes with a humorous note on chicken wings and credits.

What does ASCII stand for?

• American Standard Code for International Interchange

• Advanced Standard Code for Information Interchange

• American System Code for Internet Interchange

• American Standard Code for Information Interchange

How many printable characters does ASCII encode?

• 256

• 95

• 33

• 128

How many bits does each ASCII character use?

• 7 bits

• 8 bits

• 6 bits

• 5 bits

What was the initial purpose of the 8th bit in ASCII extensions?

• To increase character representation

• To serve as a parity bit for error checking

• To enhance processing speed

• To improve backward compatibility

What happens when the 8th bit is set to 0 in extended ASCII?

• It functions as vanilla ASCII

• It represents a new character

• It causes an error

• It switches to Unicode

Why is it important to know the code page in extended ASCII?

• To decode characters correctly

• To increase processing speed

• To reduce memory usage

• To enhance security

What is the maximum number of characters 8 bits can encode?

• 1024

• 512

• 128

• 256

What is a major limitation of 8-bit encoding?

• It cannot represent languages with thousands of characters

• It is incompatible with modern computers

• It is too slow for current technology

• It uses too much memory

What encoding standard addresses the limitations of ASCII?

• Unicode

• UTF-8

• EBCDIC

• ISO-8859-1

What will be discussed in the next episode?

• Error checking

• Extended ASCII

• Code pages

• Unicode