Yearly TV Licence? ...Really? - ANSI Character Codes

[Carol]

Steve wrote:
> > >
> > > oh and ANSI - American National Standards Institute
> > >
Carol earlier:
> > Standards! Now there's a concept I understand. Standards for what,
though? And for whom? american computer programmers? No detailed or
technical responses, please, or I'll be sorry I asked.
> > 
> > Carol, surprised that the standards aren't international
> >
> 
> bboyminn:
> 
> Wikipedia is your friend.
> 
> << ANSI was formed in 1918 <snip>

<< ANSI's membership comprises government agencies, organizations,
corporations, academic and international bodies, and individuals. In
total, the Institute represents the interests of more than 125,000
companies and 3.5 million professionals.
> 
<< Though ANSI itself does not develop standards, the Institute
facilitates the development of American National Standards, also known
as ANS, by accrediting the procedures of standards developing
organizations. ANSI accreditation signifies that the procedures used
by standards setting organizations meet the Institute's requirements
for openness, balance, consensus, and due process.
> 
<< Voluntary consensus standards quicken the market acceptance of
products while making clear how to improve the safety of those
products for the protection of consumers. There are approximately
10,500 American National Standards that carry the ANSI designation.
> 
<< American National Standards include:
> 
<< * A standard for the set of values used to represent characters in
digital computers. The ANSI code standard extended the previously
created ASCII seven bit code standard with additional codes for
European alphabets (see also Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange
Code or EBCDIC). In Microsoft Windows, the phrase "ANSI" refers to the
Windows ANSI code pages (even though they are not ANSI standards[1]).
Most of these are fixed width, though some characters for ideographic
languages are variable width. Since these characters are based on a
draft of the ISO-8859 series, some of Microsoft's symbols are visually
very similar to the ISO symbols, leading many to falsely assume that
they are identical.>>
> 
> Aren't you glad you asked. :)
> 
> Steve/bluewizard
>
Carol:
Erm, well, I'd rather you had paraphrased the article in ordinary
English than quoting these snippets. That last paragraph is
untelligible. Also, I wouldn't call Wiki my friend; the articles vary
greatly in readability and reliability. (I wouldn't cite one as a
source for a scholarly book or article!)

Anyway, I understand enough for my purposes. Thank you for trying.

Carol, who knows just enough about computers to use one for work and
recreation and fix a few minor problems