Operating Systems
and
Character Sets

Operating system: A software system that organizes the computer's resources and capabilities and makes them available to the user or to the application programs running on the computer.
Examples: Mac OS 9, Windows 2000, Unix, Linux

Boot up: Start up a computer and install the operating system in memory. (Term derived from the expression "to pull one's self up by the bootstraps")

Typical Operating System Functions:

 •Save •Delete •Rename •Copy •Directory of files/documents and applications/programs •Run (application/program) •Open/load a file •Startup programs (programs that automatically run at login/boot •Time/date keeping and stamping •Warning and error messages •Format or initialize disks

 

character: letters, numbers, symbols—anything you can type on a keyboard

ASCII character set:

The American Standard Code for Information Interchange character set that consists of 128 characters (0-127); most computer use the ASCII character coding set.

ANSI character set:

The American National Standards Institute character set. This set contains 256 characters (0-255). The first 128 characters of this set are the same as the ASCII set. Windows (except Windows NT) uses this set.

Unicode:

Unicode is an encoding system/standard that provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language. Unlike ASCII, which uses 8 bits (1 byte) for each character, Unicode uses up to 32 bits (4 bytes), which means that it can represent a huge number of unique characters. Unicode offers a the global standard character coding format, which will greatly facilitate foreign language computing. See their website for more information: www.unicode.org