UTF-8: Difference between revisions
No edit summary |
No edit summary |
||
| Line 3: | Line 3: | ||
==Overview== | ==Overview== | ||
UTF-8 encodes each [[Unicode]] character as a variable number of 1 to 4 octets. The number of octets depends on the integer value assigned to the character. | UTF-8 encodes each [[Unicode]] character as a variable number of 1 to 4 octets. The number of octets depends on the integer value assigned to the character. | ||
UTF-8 is the default encoding for XML and has been the dominant character encoding on the web since 2010.<ref>[https://www.utf8.com/ About utf-8]</ref> | UTF-8 is the default encoding for [[XML]] and has been the dominant character encoding on the web since 2010.<ref>[https://www.utf8.com/ About utf-8]</ref> | ||
[[W3C]] has offered several reasons for the popularity of UTF-8: | [[W3C]] has offered several reasons for the popularity of UTF-8: | ||
# An HTML page can only be in one encoding, and UTF-8 can support many languages and accommodate many pages and forms. | # An [[HTML]] page can only be in one encoding, and UTF-8 can support many languages and accommodate many pages and forms. | ||
# Barriers to using Unicode are very low; by January 2012, Google reported that over 60% of the Web in their sample used UTF-8. | # Barriers to using Unicode are very low; by January 2012, [[Google]] reported that over 60% of the Web in their sample used UTF-8. | ||
# ASCII is a subset of UTF-8; all ASCII characters in UTF-8 use the same bytes as an ASCII encoding, helping with | # ASCII is a subset of UTF-8; all ASCII characters in UTF-8 use the same bytes as an ASCII encoding, helping with [[Interoperability]]. | ||
# The HTML5 specification says "Authoring tools should default to using UTF-8 for newly-created documents."<ref>[https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-choosing-encodings Why choose UTF-8, W3C]</ref> | # The HTML5 specification says "Authoring tools should default to using UTF-8 for newly-created documents."<ref>[https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-choosing-encodings Why choose UTF-8, W3C]</ref> | ||
==References== | ==References== | ||
Latest revision as of 17:09, 12 May 2021
UTF-8 refers to Unicode Transformation Format 8-bit, which is a variable-width encoding that can represent every character in the Unicode character set that was designed for backward compatibility with ASCII.
Overview
UTF-8 encodes each Unicode character as a variable number of 1 to 4 octets. The number of octets depends on the integer value assigned to the character. UTF-8 is the default encoding for XML and has been the dominant character encoding on the web since 2010.[1]
W3C has offered several reasons for the popularity of UTF-8:
- An HTML page can only be in one encoding, and UTF-8 can support many languages and accommodate many pages and forms.
- Barriers to using Unicode are very low; by January 2012, Google reported that over 60% of the Web in their sample used UTF-8.
- ASCII is a subset of UTF-8; all ASCII characters in UTF-8 use the same bytes as an ASCII encoding, helping with Interoperability.
- The HTML5 specification says "Authoring tools should default to using UTF-8 for newly-created documents."[2]