How Norwegian Characters are Digitized

Enter the money. Then, all of a sudden, the Ø was replaced with the Yen character (¥), and the ø was replaced with the Cents character (¢) character as the ASCII codes were expanded with 128 new characters to make a total of 256. the new and improved character set was termed 8 bit ASCII or extended ASCII. The Ø could still be found, however, but had moved further out among new accented characters and symbols found in the code page. Here is part of the expanded (8-bit) ASCII decimal code containing the Norwegian characters. One sees that the most of the old ASCII decimal codes still apply, while new ones have been added:

Character	8-bit ASCII
æ	145	0230
ø		0248
å	134	0229
Æ	146	0198
Ø		0216
Å	143	0197

Enter globalism. Now, most new computers are based on a different system that includes all the codepages for all the characters in the world. This series of codepages is called Unicode. Microsoft switched to Unicode in Windows 2000 and all the operating systems after that release, (ME and XP) use the Unicode character set. Since Unicode contains something like 50,000 characters versus the 256 ones specified in the extended ASCII code known as Latin1, a much larger table is required, and Unicodes are usually referenced in hexadecimal. The Unicode includes the ASCII codes for a number of languages and special character sets such as mathematical and other symbols. Here are the Unicode hexadecimal values for the Norwegian characters:

Character	Unicode Hexadecimal
æ	U+00E6
ø	U+00F8
å	U+00E5
Æ	U+00C6
Ø	U+00D8
Å	U+00C5

Note the even though Unicode characters are usually referenced using the hexadecimal system, these can easily be converted to the decimal system. All it means is that the different systems have different bases. In fact, they all translate into binary code in order for the computer to make use of them, and in essence they represent the same binary code. Whereas the ASCII code is an octal system producing two alphanumeric characters for each character, Unicode is a hexadecimal system that requires four alphanumeric characters for each character, but both translate into the same decimal codes. Therefore, since the Unicode is based on the existing ASCII characters, one can enter the Norwegian characters using the extended ASCII codes in decimal form.

Enter the Internet. Since web pages are based on the HTML language, the Norwegian characters are represented by special codes. The first html codes for Norwegian characters sought to describe the existing characters much like the alphabet itself combined two existing characters to form a new one. Then, as web browsers became more powerful, the actual ASCII decimal codes could be used to denote the Norwegian characters. Here is a table of the codes that are used in html:

Character	HTML	HTML Decimal
æ	æ	æ
ø	ø	ø
å	å	å
Æ	Æ	Æ
Ø	Ø	Ø
Å	Å	Å

Conclusion. Here is an extended table to describe the codes for Norwegian characters:

Character	7-bit ASCII Decimal	8-bit ASCII Decimal	8-bit ASCII Hexadecimal	Unicode Hexadecimal	HTML	HTML Decimal	HTML Hexadecimal
æ	145	0230	E6	U+00E6	æ	æ	æ
ø		0248	F8	U+00F8	ø	ø	ø
å	134	0229	E5	U+00E5	å	å	å
Æ	146	0198	C6	U+00C6	Æ	Æ	Æ
Ø		0216	D8	U+00D8	Ø	Ø	Ø
Å	143	0197	C5	U+00C5	Å	Å	Å

«		0171	AB	U+00AB	«	«	«
»		0187	BB	U+00BB	»	»	»

Why make it so difficult?