48 Characters

Shannon coding involves a prefix that indicates the coded length. Characters are ordered by frequency of use in English text. The numbers and special characters are unordered.

The coding of space and the most common 7 characters uses 4 bits; of the next 8, 5 bits and of the remaining 32, 7 bits. The average is 5.2 bits. Within each octet, the more frequent characters are assigned the most trailing zeros. Up to 5 trailing zeros can be appended to the last (rightmost) character in a word.

Each character also has a corresponding 6-bit index into a table of graphics. There are 48+26+12 entries that include capital letters. These 16x24 bit-maps are edited by a utility called 'icon'.


   0 000    0      10 000 s  8    1100 000 d 16
   0 001 r  1      10 001 m  9    1100 001 v 17
   0 010 t  2      10 010 c 10    1100 010 p 18
   0 011 o  3      10 011 y 11    1100 011 b 19
   0 100 e  4      10 100 l 12    1100 100 h 20
   0 101 a  5      10 101 g 13    1100 101 x 21
   0 110 n  6      10 110 f 14    1100 110 u 22
   0 111 i  7      10 111 w 15    1100 111 q 23

1101 000 k 24    1110 000 8 32    1111 000 ; 40
1101 001 z 25    1110 001 9 33    1111 001 : 41
1101 010 j 26    1110 010 1 34    1111 010 ! 42
1101 011 3 27    1110 011 - 35    1111 011 + 43
1101 100 4 28    1110 100 0 36    1111 100 @ 44
1101 101 5 29    1110 101 . 37    1111 101 * 45
1101 110 6 30    1110 110 2 38    1111 110 , 46
1101 111 7 31    1110 111 / 39    1111 111 ? 47