Modern text encoding is a convoluted mess where costs can easily exceed benefits. I admit we are in a world that has moved beyond ASCII (which at best served only English, and even then without full punctuation). But modern text encoding standards (utf-x, Unicode) have metastasized to the point you spend more time working around them than benefiting from them.
ASCII Code Chart-Quick ref card” by Namazu-tron – See above description. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
