In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] says... > > On 03/01/2013 01:51 PM, Paul D. Anderson wrote: > > > In UTF-8 the "middle dot", ('•', \u00B7) and > > "multiplication sign", ('×', \u00D7) > > [...] > > > UTF-16 has many more mathematical symbols > > Sorry to pick on this unrelated issue but UTF-8 and UTF-16 are just > Unicode encodings. Unicode itself defines all of those characters and > they can all be represented in any encoding. > > Ali
Unicode is indeed an encoding. Same for ASCII, EBCDIC, ISO 8859-X, FIELDATA, etc. The clue is in the name and term: UniCODE and enCODEing. The CODEs are unique numbers associated with each character. UTF-Xs are transformation formats. While it is not strictly incorrect to call the UTFs encodings, it is probably best avoided for better clarity. The use of the word "encoding" to mean "coded character set" goes way back. Unicode, of course, has some very specific and extensive, if not confusing, terminology and one should go there to get the story straight from the horse's mouth, but I was just chiming in to to note that "encoding" is short for "coded character set" and Unicdode is exactly that, at it's core.
