Computer term: what's this called?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion centers around the issue of text encoding, specifically regarding the misinterpretation of Korean text as Japanese due to changes in regional settings on a computer. Participants explore the nature of text encoding, potential solutions for retrieving the original text, and the role of Unicode in handling multiple languages.

Discussion Character

  • Technical explanation
  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • One participant describes their experience of opening a notepad file with Korean text after switching regional settings to Japanese, leading to the text being displayed incorrectly.
  • Another participant identifies the issue as related to text encoding, explaining that the bits representing Korean characters were remapped to Japanese characters, and clarifies that Unicode is a type of encoding scheme.
  • Possible solutions are suggested, including adjusting encoding settings in Microsoft Office and using Notepad++ to experiment with different encoding options.
  • A later reply mentions successfully retrieving some information using Microsoft Word, although the retrieval was not perfect.
  • One participant explains that Unicode is a 16-bit code designed to eliminate overlapping character sets, allowing for multiple languages in a single text file.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally agree on the nature of the problem being related to text encoding, but there are differing views on the specifics of how encoding works and the effectiveness of various solutions proposed.

Contextual Notes

There are unresolved aspects regarding the specific encoding used in the original text file and the limitations of the suggested solutions, as well as the effectiveness of different software in handling the encoding issue.

Who May Find This Useful

This discussion may be useful for individuals dealing with text encoding issues, particularly those who work with multiple languages on computers and seek to understand how regional settings affect text display.

Acuben
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2 issues.

1. I don't know what this is called. unicode or something? allow me to explain.
I opened a notepad. Typed something in Korean and saved it long time ago. Now I switched regional settings to Japanese. I opened the notepad I saved long time ago and the text is now shown in Japanese (and I need to read it in Korean). I do NOT mean it translated the word in Japanese in its meaning. It seems like same sets of code is used as encryption for both Korean and Japanese so that the code that is supposed to decrypted in Korean is decrypted in Japanese?
What is this encryption of language(other than English) used on computer called?

2. Whatever the word for number 1 is, is there a website that could re-encrypt the Japanese word and decrypt it again in Korean?


--
I tried microsoft applocal, but no luck there. (it seems like it's mainly designed for .exe programs and not for vista)
yes changing regional settings back to Korean is one method, but meh.

Some computer background: vistaHome SP1 32bit OS, x86.
other than that, low specs
 
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Oh man, what you're talking about is called text encoding and there are dozens (hundreds?) of schemes. There's no transferring it from korean to japanese or vice versa. What happened was the 8 or whatever bits that were mapped to korean characters got remapped to Japanese ones. Unicode is a type of encoding scheme, but if your text had been encoded in unicode the character set shouldn't change when you switch regional settings. So possible solutions:
a) mess around with the encoding settings in office
b) download notepad++, paste your text in, and go through the encoding menu until your glyphs start looking like they're in Korean

.exe programs are executables-they run on all variants of windows.
 
hey thanks, I was able to open it with microsoft2007 and was able to partially retrieve some of the information... after lot of time spent ^^ turns out, I can just open file with microsoft word directly >_> took me a while to figure that out. It still wasn't perfect decryption, but enough to understand.
 
Unicode is a 16 bit code that eliminates the overlapping of character sets. With unicode you could have a single text file that includes several languages.
 

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