different fonts in word...

You know how there are 8 bits for one character on the keyboard? Well that makes sence but what about all the other fonts and sizes? Shouldn't that be a heck of a lot more bits for one character or something?

Thanks

Fonts is not a code, but display purposes only. In a word, just additional information to be attached to the code.

For example, you can even assign a whole one picture to a code. In addition, to some codes a function or command are assigned. <Return><Tab> are not fonts or characters but functions.


Code is numbers or places to be assigned almost anything possible. 8bit is 265 possible combinations. So that 256 different something can be assingned.

When you say- In a word, just additional information to be attached to the code- what do you mean by additional information, is the additional information other 0's and 1's that tell the existing code that they will be showing this font?

Well! A few of the codes are made use of as special functions.. So to speak. as a landmark.

When this landmark is put immediately before the some code, the next code is interpreted as some other information, for example, it's a character.

In another language, like japanese or chinese, they have many characters, so that 256 is not enough.

How do we solve this? Then the other landmark-code is used.

When this code is put, the next two succeeding codes are to be interpreted as character information.

There are 256 * 256 = 65536 possible combinations.

As well, another landmark indicates the next is a picture, sound, and font information or anything

Ok I think I get you, its like putting on different colors of glasses on your eyes. You change the glasses to a different color and you see a different outlook.

(^^;( Excellent! Tiny Warrior In Virtual World! Good Night!)

In the beginning there was ASCII....the standard used for encoding alpha numeric characters into 8-bits. There were even enough values left over for the escape key, the return key, CRLF, and many more. Then with the advent of world wide computing, a new system was developed called unicode which is like ASCII, but is actually a 16-bit standard . This allows for chinese, arabic, sanscript and many other language adoptions. For more information look here
kevin

On a keyboard, do the keys like escape and shift that don't show a character when you press them in a word application use the 8 bit combination as do the characters that show up when you press w or c for example?

I can honestly say that i'm not sure, but I believe the escape key, tab,del, backspace,arrow keys, and others are not in the ASCII character set.
As far as keyboards goes, they typically do not send an 8-bit ASCII character when you press a key. For ex. when you press the space bar, the hex value 0x20 is not neccessarily what is sent. When a key is pressed, the first thing that typically gets sent is a make code then a code for the specific key. When a key is released, the first thing sent is a break code, the the code for the specific key is sent. I'm sure there is some standard for what code is sent for what key, but I have worked on custom wireless keyboards that had there own keycodes.
kevin

When you said then a code of a specific key, is that when the 8 bit code is sent, at least for a character? I read that the code for space bar is 01000000.

Before I get myself too far into this...google "keyboard make code". just about every hit may get you the info you want.
kevin