On 2019-12-03 12:59 AM, Richard Wordingham via Unicode wrote:
On Mon, 2 Dec 2019 12:01:52 +0000
"Costello, Roger L. via Unicode" <unicode@unicode.org> wrote:
From the book titled "Computer Power and Human Reason" by Joseph
Weizenbaum, p.74-75
Suppose that the alphabet with which we wish to concern ourselves
consists of 256 distinct symbols...
Why should I wish to concern myself with only one alphabet?
You shouldn't. But suppose you did. That's the hypothetical set-up for
the illustration.
When that book was published in 1976, that illustration may have helped
some people gain a better understanding of computer encoding.
Nowadays a character string might be required to produce a glyph which
the user community considers to be a "character" (or letter) in its
writing system. Adding variation selectors, invisible 'formatting'
characters, and non-alphabetic symbols to the mix has moved computer
encoding way beyond 1976.
