Internal Code

It is used by the computer system or applied programs of the computer, the usage is limited in the system or the program, and it varies in accordance with system.

Interchange Code

It is used in the communication among different systems or for exchange of information.

Characters Set

It is a finite set composed with various characters and is considered as a complete and recognized characters set. Identical characters set that has been in a consensus are generally applied; then various characters sets are set in line with different needs. For example, both BIG5 and EUC codes use the characters set of CNS 11643.

CNS 11643

Chinese National Standard Code was announced as a national standard on 4th August, 1986. It is a two-byte encoding and there are sixteen planes included in the encoding area. Plane order is set based on the frequency of usage. The characters set and typeface of Chinese National Standard Code are based on the Chart of Standard Forms of Common National Characters issued by the Ministry of Education, Executive Yuan, Republic of China.

Big5

BIG5 means the five modules of the PC system, which are: system utility, composition of characters, state of set up, fonts and print set up etc. It was established in 1985 as a two-byte encoding; currently in the PC system the internal code used by Windows95／98／ME is BIG5 code and there are altogether 13,053 characters included.

EUC

ECU is the internal code used in UNIX operation system (the abbreviation for Extend Unix Code). It is a four-byte encoding with a vast encoding area that are capable of holding characters used by the names of citizens of the entire nation who have registered their permanent residence; therefore the Ministry of Interior applies EUC as the Chinese Internal Code for the nationwide operations on household and military administration.

Unicode

Unicode is the short form of Universal Code; it was established during 1988 to 1991 by the Unicode Technology Consortium (UTC). It has become ISO accreditation standard, thus the characters set is consistent with ISO 10646; it is the internal code of WindowsNT/2000/XP for PC.

GBK

It is the encoding standard of Hanzi used in China. GB means “National Standard” and K is the first alphabet of the Chinese spelling of “Expansion”. The full name of GBK is “ Hanzi Internal Code Expansion Specification” and the English name is Chinese Internal Code Specification.

ISO 10646

Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Characters Set (UCS in short, eight bytes encoding characters set are widely used.) is a universal standard of character code edited by ISO, and is completely compatible with the Unicode encoding of the Unicode Organization. It is an encoding system which includes written forms and additional symbols of various languages in the world.

Glyph

It is the form of a character, which also means to use a method that computer understands to display the forms of characters in the peripheral facilities. For example, DOS frequently uses dot matrix fonts and Windows usually uses vector-shaped frame fonts.

User Fonts

User Fonts are the characters other than the basic computer characters set; no matter the characters are created by a character creating program or downloaded from Master Ideographs Seeker they are all called User Fonts.

Byte

Byte is the basic unit for computer to save information, and computer is operated by a binary system because there is only two kinds of bits - zero or one. A byte contains eight bits and each English alphabet or numeral existing in a computer is composed of eight bits. For example, 01000001 represents 'A', 01000010 represents 'B' etc.; therefore, if information saved contains one hundred bytes, which indicates such information includes one hundred English alphabets or numerals. Chinese encoding is much complicated, thus it usually uses two to three bytes to represent one Chinese character (for example: Big 5 Code).

RGB

The abbreviation of red, green and blue, it is the RGB of light. The various colors displayed in a computer come from the mix of these three colors. If red, green and blue are capable of making 256 variations, the combination of the three colors would come out in 256×256×256=16,777,216 colors which is the closest to natural colors a computer can get for now, and it is what we call “Full Color”. Once it is set in full color each color needs 8 x 3 = 24 bits, which also means it has to be stored by three bytes.

Organizations

Organizations, schools, corporations or enterprises that owns more than two computers.

General Users

Individual PC users who do not belong to any “Organization”.

Administrator of User Fonts Creation of Character (Sever End)

The person who is in charge of the central management of computer created characters in an organization.

Client End

Computer users other than the “Administrator of User Fonts” in an organization.

Shared Character Set

The user fonts file which is shared inside an organization.

Rare Character File

The user fonts file which is user-created or purchased.

External Character File

The user fonts file which is purchased from a supplier or provide by other people.