1. Thessalonica's Universal Converter allows you to convert texts from old 8-bit character sets to Unicode and vice versa.

2. However, complex-script languages like Chinese or Japanese need more characters than the 256 limit imposed by 8-bit character encodings.

3. Now it can be customized for conversion from almost any 8-bit character set (not only Greek) to Unicode and vice versa.

4. The C1 controls subheading contains 32 supplementary control codes inherited from ISO/IEC 8859-1 and many other 8-bit character standards.

5. ISO 6438:1983, Documentation — African coded character set for bibliographic information interchange, is an ISO standard for an 8-bit character encoding for African languages.

6. However, more characters were needed than could fit in a single 8-bit character encoding, so several mappings were developed, including at least ten suitable for various Latin alphabets.

7. All these utilities are more or less similar to Thessalonica, because usually they include the same 2 modules, i. e. a keyboard controller and a conversion tool for one or more 8-bit character sets.