What is the difference between using Unicode and UUENCODE?

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Guest

For e-mail I use Outlook 2003 with Windows XP. I use HTML format unless I see
from an e-mail reply that my original message is full of code. Then I use
Plain Text format.

One e-mail recipient with whom I do daily business says she keeps getting a
message that my e-mails use Unicode and that it might not be compatible with
some computers (she uses a Mac). I see I have the option of choosing UUENCODE
for Plain Text outgoing messages.

What is the difference betwwen using Unicode and UUENCODE? What could be
causing all the code I see in my original e-mail messages when I get a reply?
thanks!
 
Unicode is a character encoding schema which uses 16 bit (65536 possible
combinations) in order to express a single character instead of 7 or 8 bits
(128 or 256 possible combinations) which is used in traditional Ascii, Ansi
etc. Thus unicode is able to encode all characters: us, european, arabic,
hebraic, chinese, japanese etc. by assiging a number to each character.
Since email server usually only transport 7 bits, unicode characters must be
encoded somehow in 7 bits (5 normal characters), because many developer have
had many ideas there are several methods of how to encode unicode,
characters by expressing them as numbers and letters by writing it down in
decimal, hexadecimal, octal or shifting bits in may differnt ways.

UUENCODE is a method of how to transport binary files in 7 bit ascii by
writing a header containing the file name and file size and a lot of
characters and numbers 5 7-bit characters are used to encode 4 bytes of
binary data. UUENCODE is rarly used today modern style emails are using MIME
and encode binary data with BASE64. Macs sometimes encode binary data with
the MACBINARY format, which is a different way of how to encode binary into
7 bits.

Normally, communication between you and your recipients should be find if
both use the MIME format. If nobody is writing texts in chinese, japanese,
arabic, hebraic etc. you also will not have to use unicode.

Thomas Quester
www.olfolders.de
 
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