Chinese Character Code for Information Interchange
Encyclopedia
Chinese Character Code for Information Interchange (中文資訊交換碼) or CCCII is a character set developed specifically to address the problem of interchange of Chinese information. It is used mostly by libraries
because the code contains various properties considered to be desirable by libraries.
CCCII is a superset of ASCII
designed to conform to ISO 2022.
Each Chinese character is represented by a 3-byte code in which each byte is 7-bit. Thus, the maximum number of Chinese characters representable in CCCII is 94×94×94 = 830584.
In practice the number of characters encodable by CCCII would be less than this number, because variant characters are encoded in related ISO 2022 planes under CCCII, so most of the code points would have to be reserved for variants.
The code is adopted as the character set for Library of Congress
with the name East Asia Coded Character (EACC, ANSI/NISO Z39.64).
Library
In a traditional sense, a library is a large collection of books, and can refer to the place in which the collection is housed. Today, the term can refer to any collection, including digital sources, resources, and services...
because the code contains various properties considered to be desirable by libraries.
CCCII is a superset of ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
designed to conform to ISO 2022.
Each Chinese character is represented by a 3-byte code in which each byte is 7-bit. Thus, the maximum number of Chinese characters representable in CCCII is 94×94×94 = 830584.
In practice the number of characters encodable by CCCII would be less than this number, because variant characters are encoded in related ISO 2022 planes under CCCII, so most of the code points would have to be reserved for variants.
The code is adopted as the character set for Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
with the name East Asia Coded Character (EACC, ANSI/NISO Z39.64).
External links
- CNS 11643 official web site (English version of pages available) has information about the CCCII character set in the "Chinese Information Code" section