Xpand 2024 - There's No Such Thing As Plain Text, by Dylan Beattie

Dylan Beattie - Consultant, software developer and international keynote speaker.

In this talk, Dylan takes us on an enjoyable summary of the fascinating world of code pages and character encoding systems, tracing their evolution from early standards like Code Page 437, used by IBM PCs in the 1980s, to modern Unicode. Code Page 437 was known for its inclusion of block drawing characters and partial Greek alphabet, leading to quirky results like smiley faces appearing on screens during crashes. We also delve into international encoding challenges, such as the clever workaround used by the Soviet Union to handle Cyrillic characters in email, and funny errors caused by misinterpreting code pages, like the misspelling of Billy Joel’s album or errors in translating Russian addresses. Finally, we discuss how Unicode was established to unify character representation across all languages and devices, addressing the complexities and historical quirks of different alphabet systems to ensure consistent communication worldwide.

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