Conclusion

The only source of knowledge is experience.

—Albert Einstein

You have come a long way since the beginning of this book. We started with an overview of the major types of writing systems and the languages that they are used with. Then you learned how the characters representing human languages are stored at the machine level. You have seen that a wide range of proprietary encodings evolved before the concept of Unicode was conceived as an innovative approach to overcome the Babel of codes. In Chapters 3 and 4 you learned about the SAS approach to encodings and last but not least you learned how to diagnose and troubleshoot encoding problems. I hope that I have given you a better understanding of the basic concepts, and, I also hope the practical examples will help you to track down and fix transcoding errors.

Just as food for thought: Most people tend to forget how short-lived modern storage devices such as hard disks or even solid-state disks are. So do not forget to regularly backup your computer! The information stored on a clay tablet will still be readable when the information from a tablet computer may have gone for a long time.

The prominent English mathematician G. H. Hardy wrote in “A Mathematician’s Apology” that he had never done anything useful but continued that he added something to knowledge, and helped others to add more.¹ My goal here is more modest. If I have helped you to better understand the intricacies of character encodings, and if I have helped you to solve your encoding problems, I feel I have made good use of my time.

(Endnotes)

1Hardy, G. H. (1992). A Mathematician’s Apology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 150 f.