Japanese language and computers: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 08:06, 22 December 2023

Revision as of 18:14, 29 March 2024

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==Character encodings==

There are several standard methods to [[character encoding|encode]] Japanese characters for use on a computer, including [[JIS encoding|JIS]], [[Shift-JIS]], [[Extended Unix Code|EUC]], and [[Unicode]]. While mapping the set of [[kana]] is a simple matter, [[kanji]] has proven more difficult. Despite efforts, none of the encoding schemes have become the de facto standard, and multiple encoding standards were in use by the 2000s. As of 2017, the share of [[UTF-8]] traffic on the Internet has expanded to over 90 % worldwide, and only 1.2% was for using Shift-JIS and EUC. Yet, a few popular websites including [[2channel]] and [[kakaku.com]] are still using Shift-JIS.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://internet.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/yajiuma/1086378.html|title=【やじうまWatch】 ウェブサイトにおける文字コードの割合、UTF-8が90％超え。Shift_JISやEUC-JPは？ - INTERNET Watch|date=2017-10-17|website=INTERNET Watch|access-date=2019-05-11}}</ref>

Until 2000s, most Japanese [[email]]s were in [[ISO-2022-JP]] ("JIS encoding") and [[web page]]s in [[Shift-JIS]] and mobile phones in Japan usually used some form of [[Extended Unix Code]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://ash.jp/code/code.htm|title=文字コードについて|date=2002|publisher=ASH Corporation|access-date=2019-05-14}}</ref> If a program fails to determine the encoding scheme employed, it can cause {{Nihongo3|"misconverted garbled/garbage characters"|文字化け|''[[mojibake]]''|literally "transformed characters"}} and thus unreadable text on computers.