Code Pages

 

A computer determines which character to display based on a table of values, which is specific to a written language. This table is often referred to as the code page.

A small number of characters are independent of a computer's input language. These are '1-9', 'a-z', 'A-Z' and some special characters, for example punctuation and brackets. These are listed in the ASCII table as shown.

 

 

 

 

 

 

An additional 128 characters are available, which are specific to each code page. The following examples show the differences between the available characters for the Latin and Thai code pages.

Code page 1252, Western languages

In LogTag^® Analyzer password and user ID fields are text entry fields. The code page is used to determine the characters LogTag^® Analyzer displays on screen and stores inside a logger. Which code page is selected depends on which input language you have selected for your computer. When the LogTag^® is downloaded in a different country, the user ID is displayed with the characters from the code page who's reference is stored in the logger. This is possible because all Windows code pages get installed as part of the operating system, although only one is used at a time to display characters.

Passwords are always displayed with the asterisk character, but you will need to type them into a confirmation dialogue (especially if the password on download feature is enabled). You can use the Windows character map to enter characters that are not available in your language. To access the Windows character map, enter charmap.exe in the "Search" or "Run" box of the Start menu, depending on your operating system, and press Enter.

Some code pages make more than these extra 128 characters available, but this requires more storage in the logger's memory, which reduces the number of characters available for password and user ID. These languages are Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Korean and Japanese. For every character not in the ASCII character table A computer determines which character to display based on a table of values, which is specific to a written language. This table is often referred to as the code page. the number of characters that can be stored is reduced by one. This means a password can be as short as 3 characters, and a description as short as 19 characters (or 18 characters for a TRID30-7 or TRED30-7).

These samples shows the extended character overview and a character subset.

Code page 932, Japanese language

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can find more information about the history and technical background of code pages via a number of online references.