What is UTF-8?

v. t. e. UTF-8 is a variable-width character encoding used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from Unicode (or Universal Coded Character Set) Transformation Format – 8-bit. UTF-8 is capable of encoding all 1,112,064 valid character code points in Unicode using one to four one- byte (8-bit) code units.

What is UTF-8 sparse encoding?

UTF-8 is a sparse encoding in the sense that a large fraction of possible byte combinations do not result in valid UTF-8 text. Binary data and text in any other encoding are likely to contain byte sequences that are invalid as UTF-8.

What is mapmapserver?

MapServer is an open-source development environment for building spatially enabled internet applications, built in the C language, and is widely known as one of the fastest Web mapping engines available. It can run as a CGI program or via MapScript which supports several programming languages (using SWIG ).

What is the history of MapServer?

MapServer was originally developed with support from NASA, which needed a way to make its satellite imagery available to the public. In November 2005, Autodesk, the MapServer Technical Steering Committee Members, the University of Minnesota, and DM Solutions Group announced the creation of the MapServer Foundation.