Re: Terminology: does the term "codepoint" apply to non-Unicode character sets?

On 1/1/2013 12:43 PM, Costello, Roger L. wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> Does the term "codepoint" apply to non-Unicode character sets?
>
> For example, are there codepoints in iso-8859-1? In Windows-1252?
>
> /Roger
>
>
>
The short answer is "yes".

The term code point was in use for locations in IBM code pages long
before Unicode was created; in the context of other standards, slightly
different terms were in use, such as "code location". (Windows-1252,
while created by Microsoft, was registered in the IBM code page
collection at the time, which assigned to it the number 1252, so the use
of "code point" for that character set is definitely an extension of
the earlier usage).

It's worthwhile to make sure that if you operate in the context of some
other standard, that you make sure you follow the terminology as defined
there, but for general use, the word code point is not tied to or
reserved for Unicode (but make sure you are clear which character set
you are talking about).

Both spellings, with and without the intervening space, can be found,
but Unicode uses the term only without the space.

A./
Received on Wed Jan 02 2013 - 00:46:39 CST