23 August 2022

Unicode

• We saw that ASCII could at most represent 256 characters.

• Today’s needs have increased due to multiple languages being used simultaneously and cross
platform apps running across different servers in different countries.
• This has given rise to the need for more characters to be represented at one time on a computer.
• Unicode allows a larger number of characters. Unicode uses 16 bits per character by default.
• Thus Unicode allows a total of 65,536 characters.
• In order to maintain compatibility, Unicode and ASCII use the same codes for common characters
in a language.
• Due to the range of characters available, Unicode allows a computer system to display and
represent multiple languages at one time.
• Unicode however, does not use a serial method of character representation. Instead it uses an
encoding method.

1.2 Multimedia
The term multimedia refers to a combination of media types including:
• Text
• Images/Graphics
• Animations
• Sound
• Video

Graphics

• A graphic is an image/picture.
• A graphic can be either:
◦ Bitmap, or
◦ Vector
• A bitmap graphic is created using a grid of pixels.
• A vector graphic is created using a collection of drawing commands.
• A pixel is the smallest addressable location on a screen/image.

Bitmap graphics

• Pixel is short for picture element.

• Since a bitmap image is formed using an array/grid of pixels, when the image is zoomed in
(enlarged), it looks distorted.
• This is because the pixels are mapped onto a larger grid/array.
Original image Zoomed/enlarge image

• Each pixel used in the image can be of a

different colour.
• An example of a black and white bitmap image
10001
10010
10100
11000
10100
10010
10001
00000

• The grid above shows a detailed view of a simple bitmap image forming the letter K.
• To the right of it is the actual bit pattern used to form the image. So the image is actually stored as
1s and 0s.
• Based on this, each row of pixels takes up 5 bits. And we have 8 rows of this.
• Thus the total space occupied by this image is 5 x 8 bits = 40 bits
• 40 bits = 5 Bytes. So this image takes up 5 Bytes of storage space.
• Let us now consider the same image in different colours.

01 00 00 00 11
01 00 00 11 00
01 00 11 00 00
01 11 00 00 00
01 00 11 00 00
01 00 00 11 00
01 00 00 00 11
00 00 00 00 00

• In the black and white image, the black was 1 and the white was 0. So with 1 bit, we showed 1
pixel.
• Now that we have 3 colours, we need more bits per pixel.
Black = 11
White = 00
Red = 01
• Looking at the image we see that the number of bits used in the image have doubled, although the
image appears to be the same size.
• Therefore, the amount of storage space has also doubled. Now the image size is calculated as
follows:
5 * 8 pixels * 2 bits = 80 bits
= 80 / 8 = 10 Bytes.