A graphic character is a symbol in a predefined character set that is not a letter or number. Graphic characters include glyphs and are part of character sets that also contain letters, numbers, punctuation, and control characters. Originally, ASCII was the standard character set, but Unicode has since unified all character sets and allows for more characters and glyphs. Control characters, including white space, are also considered graphic characters. Graphic fonts are mainly used for mathematical or technical symbols.
A graphic character, in computer programming, is any symbol that is part of a predefined character set but is not a letter or number. A character set is a sequence of symbols that a computer uses to display data. characters consist of letters, numbers, punctuation, control characters, and graphic symbols. A single element of this set is a graphic character. There are many predefined character sets, each containing a variety of graphic characters or none at all.
A full character set is a list of symbols, letters, numbers, and punctuation that your computer can index by number to display the data correctly. An example is a font, which is a set of characters. Although each font on a computer can appear differently, the letters are all in the same order within the set. This means that no matter which character you select, the index of the letter “A” will always be the same.
Graphic characters exist within a character set. They are all characters that are not numbers or letters but are instead known as glyphs. These glyphs can be representative of different signs and symbols in different industries, or it could just be a collection of trivial shapes because, while the alphanumeric part of a character set is strictly defined by international standards, the graphic part is not.
Originally, the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) was the standard character set for most computers. The ASCII character set defined all characters above index 127 as a graphic character. ASCII was based on an eight-bit system, so there were, at most, 256 characters available in the set. This meant that there were 128 spaces for graphic characters, all of which were filled.
The first common use for a graphic font was to draw windows and other shapes on the screen in text mode. The advent of fully graphical operating systems removed this need, however, and these fonts have become sparsely used, mainly in console applications. Over time, different countries established their own character sets, most of which were incompatible with each other. The Unicode® character set solved this problem over the next few years.
The establishment of Unicode® as an international standard for character sets unified all of the disparate sets that existed. Unicode® allows for many more characters than ASCII, and also reserves space for glyphs and other graphical representations of characters, such as arrows.L he use of a graphic font in 2011 is done mainly when there is a need to show a mathematical or other technical symbol.
Within a character set, there are special characters, known as control characters, that do not appear visually on the screen but determine an action to be performed by the computer. These include line feed, return, and backspace. The character for a white space is considered both a control character and a graphic character even though it technically has no visual representation. The space is the only graphic character that is also a control character.
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