littleendianmerkintää

Little-endian merking is a character representation format used for fonts and other displayable characters. It is a part of the font data in Windows operating systems. The term "little-endian" originates from the representation of binary numbers in computer architecture. In little-endian representation, the least significant byte of a multi-byte sequence is stored first in memory.

In the context of font data, little-endian merking represents the physical layout of characters on a display device, usually a monitor or printer. The data includes the shape of characters, including curves and lines, and is usually stored in Unicode format. The merking is not the same as the actual text or character set.

The little-endian merking in font data allows graphics or fonts to be displayed correctly on a computer system, even if the system's endianness does not match the endianness of the character representation. For example, a font designed on a little-endian system can still be used on a big-endian system if the font data is handled correctly.

Windows operating systems use little-endian merking to represent font data, but other systems may use big-endian or other representations. Microsoft has used little-endian merking in its font files since Windows 3.1. The merking is a necessary component for font rendering on Windows systems, and incorrect merking can result in incorrect display of characters.

Device manufacturers may also require specific forms of little-endian merking for their hardware. When designing fonts or creating font datasets, manufacturers should carefully choose the endianness of the data for compatibility with their target devices.