BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

This patent application relates to an electronic computing device and method for encoding a sequence of characters

There are a large number of coding methodologies available for encoding a sequence of characters into bits of data for transmission either between various operating components of a computer system or over a communications network.

An example of an encoding methodology is the ASCII standard (American Standard Code for Information Interchange. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Most modem character-encoding schemes are based on ASCII.

The present invention seeks to provide an electronic computing device and method of encoding a sequence of characters in a manner which effectively reduces the amount of data required to represent the sequence of characters thereby increasing the efficiency of the computer system using the encoding methodology. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

According to a first example embodiment of the present invention there is provided a computer-implemented method of encoding a sequence of characters comprising: accessing, from a computer device, a set of symbols including a plurality of symbol subsets, each subset being comprised of at least two symbols; associating, at the computer device, each one of the plurality of symbol subsets to a code sequence representing the symbol subset wherein the code sequence is a plurality of bits; parsing the sequence of characters to be encoded into groups of characters with each group having the same number of characters as the symbol subsets in the set of symbols; determining for each group of characters a matching symbol subset in the set of symbols; for each matched symbol subset, retrieving the associated code sequence; and combining the retrieved code sequences into a combined code sequence which is an encoded representation of the sequence of characters.

Each of the plurality of symbol subsets may include one of two symbols, three symbols or four symbols. The plurality of bits may be one of eight bits, sixteen bits, twenty-four bits or thirty-two bits.

According to a second example embodiment of the present invention there is provided a computer-implemented device for encoding a sequence of characters comprising: a memory 14; a processor operable to: access, from a computer device, a set of symbols including a plurality of symbol subsets, each subset being comprised of at least two symbols; associate, at the computer device, each one of the plurality of symbol subsets to a code sequence representing the symbol subset wherein the code sequence is a plurality of bits; parse the sequence of characters to be encoded into groups of characters with each group having the same number of characters as the symbol subsets in the set of symbols; determine for each group of characters a matching symbol subset in the set of symbols; for each matched symbol subset, retrieve the associated code sequence; and combine the retrieved code sequences into a combined code sequence which is an encoded representation of the sequence of characters. Each of the plurality of symbol subsets may include one of two symbols, three symbols or four symbols.

The plurality of bits may be one of eight bits, sixteen bits, twenty-four bits or thirty-two bits.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Figure 1 shows a schematic drawing of an example system in accordance with an example embodiment;

Figure 2 shows an example Set of 'symbols'; and

Figure 3 shows an example keyboard for use with the present invention.

DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

The present invention relates to a computer-implemented method of encoding a sequence of characters.

Characters includes for example letters, numbers, punctuation marks, spaces, emoticons and special characters and could include any other required characters, for example characters which may be represented on a keyboard. For example, each character could represent an image, a standard phrase or series of characters or even a computer application.

In the following description, for purposes of explanation, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of an embodiment of the present disclosure. It will be evident, however, to one skilled in the art that the present disclosure may be practiced without these specific details. Referring to the accompanying Figures, an example electronic computing device is implemented for example by a server 10 including a processor 12 and an associated memory 14.

A communication module 16 is also provided by means of which the server can communicate with other computing systems.

Stored in the memory 14 is a set of symbols including a plurality of symbol subsets, each subset being comprised of at least two symbols.

A symbol could be for example letters, numbers, punctuation marks, spaces, emoticons and special symbols and could also include any other required symbols. For example, each symbol could represent an image, a standard phrase or series of symbols or even a computer application.

A simple example of a symbol subset including two symbols would therefore be AA or AB or A! or 35 to name but a few examples.

An example of a symbol subset including three symbols would therefore be AAA or AAB or AE1 or 245 to name but a few examples.

Each one of the plurality of symbol subsets is associated, at the computer device, to a code sequence representing the symbol subset wherein the code sequence is a plurality of bits.

The number of bits used may be 5, 6, 7, 8, 16, 24 or 32 bits per symbol subset for example.

In any event, the sequence of characters to be encoded is parsed into groups of characters with each group having the same number of characters as the symbol subsets in the set of symbols.

For example, if the sequence of characters to be encoded is "Good Morning" and the symbol subsets each have three symbols then this will be pareed by the processor 12 into groups of characters as follows: "Goo" "d M" "orn" "ing".

For each group of characters a matching symbol subset in the set of symbols is then retrieved by the processor 12 from the memory 14. So using an 8 bit example:

"Goo" 10010011

"d M" 11001100

"orn" 00110101

"ing" 01010010

Finally, the processor 12 will combine the retrieved code sequences into a combined code sequence which is an encoded representation of the sequence of characters.

Using the above example: 10010011 1100110000110101 01010010.

In this example, there are 32 bits while but in ASCII code this would have been 96 bits.

Thus it will be appreciated that this encoded representation will be used by different components within an electronic computing device to communicate with one another or be transmitted between various different electronic computing devices in communication with one another. Alternatively or in addition, this encoded representation will be what is transmitted between two users of communication devices whereby the message "Good Morning" is being sent from the one user to the other using the communication devices.

In any event, as already above, the above-mentioned system and methodology can be implemented in various ways. Computers operate primarily in bits but more specifically in bytes (being 8 bits as mentioned).

However each combination of bits, represent a single or individual symbol.

In any event, by utilising a Symbol Encoding Set with 8 bits there are 256 different code sequences which are each a unique combination of these 8 bits.

These 256 different combinations will allow for the storage of every possible combination of any two of 16 unique symbols, with every possible combination of any two of these symbols being assigned a unique combination of one of the 256 code sequences. Thus each symbol subset comprised of two symbols is associated with a unique code sequence.

An example of the above is illustrated in Figure 2 where the 16 symbols are the numbers 0-9 and the letters a-f. It will be appreciated that every combination of any two of these symbols is located in the table and is referred to as a symbol subset. Each of these symbol subsets is allocated a different code sequence and therefore 256 code sequences are used to represent all of these symbol subsets.

In another example, the possible unique symbols in this Symbol Encoding Set could be the numbers 0-9, space, comma, full stop, -, and 2 other symbols.

Comparing the data requirements of this Symbol Encoding Set with the well-known ASCII set for example quickly shows the data saving capability of the present invention.

A simple example illustrates this as follows:

Thus it can be seen that to represent the sequence of characters a3 requires half the amount of bits using the code sequence of Figure 2 according to the present invention when compared to using ASCII.

Some further examples of Symbol Encoding Sets could be as follows:

An example of using 40 unique symbols with 3 symbols per symbol subset could be the numbers 0-9, space, Lowercase a-z, and 3 other symbols.

An example of using 64 unique symbols with 4 symbols per symbol subset could be the numbers 0-9, space, Lowercase a-z, and 27 other symbols.

An example of using 84 unique symbols with 5 symbols per symbol subset could be the numbers 0-9, space, Lowercase a-z, Uppercase A-Z and 21 other symbols.

It will be appreciated that the above represents significant data savings compared to storing one unique symbol per code sequence.

One way that the system would work is if the input device, the keyboard for example, is a virtual representation of a keyboard which only shows the specific symbols available from the base symbols for that specific symbol set An example of such a keyboard is shown in Figure 3. This could also be done through the computer application, showing the various choices or allowing the user to choose from a series of menus or by searching for the required item.

It will be appreciated that by using the above mentioned system and method, the computer system is able to store and use data in a more efficient way, thus saving storage space, cutting down on transmission times and network capacity and overall saving on costs.

The system also allows for the ability to utilise a symbol to point to another Symbol Encoding Set, which will open up another whole range.

Thus a symbol could instruct the computing device to access a different set of symbols. For example, the computing device could be using an 8 bit, 256 set of symbol subsets where each symbol subset is a combination of two of the numbers 0-9, space, comma, full stop, and wherein one of the 2 other symbols instructs the computing device to switch to using a 16 bit, 64,000 set of symbol subsets where each symbol subset is a combination of three of the numbers 0-9, space, lowercase a-z, and 3 other symbols. it will be appreciated that in this way the electronic computing device can switch between different sets of symbols without restriction if the current set of symbols that the computing device is using is found to not be suitable for a particular application or communication and the computing device can then switch back to the original set of symbols as required.