Chapter 41

ch38 Codecs: Coding and

Decoding

Contents

41.1 With Codes, Shorter is Better........... 311

41.2 Patents......................... 311

41.3 MIME Types..................... 312

41.4 Encoding Text (Characters)............ 312

41.5 Encoding Images................... 313

Text, images, sounds, and video: these are the media we most often en-
counter on the Internet. Each of these is a natural part of our life experi-
ence.

But for the Internet, they each have one important challenge: encoding.

Briefly put, computers work in a language calledbinary, where everything
is represented by strings of ones and zeroes.

How do we represent things that are not ones and zeroes? How do we
represent, for instance, the number five?

One method, binary integer, represents it as 101.

Another method, ascii character, represents it as 0110101.

Websites must encode all content in ways that the web browsers can correctly
decode, or you just get random characters across your screen.

310