(ass-key)
A text standard that consists of 128 characters (0-127) covering alphabetical, numerical, punctuation, and a few text control characters. Many variations exist for similar specifications relating to text coded 128-255. Some are incorrectly called ASCII, they are instead extensions to ASCII. They have been primarily developed to handle accented and other non-English characters. One extension, Unicode, has been developed as the standard for all languages. It is gaining acceptance.