PrintableCharts
THE BASE64 ENCODING

1 / 3 · mockup · office

THE BASE64 ENCODING

three bytes become four characters: the alphabet, the tail, and what the "=" at the end is for

Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.

Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.

Premium$2.50

Payment and email are handled by Paddle. The download link arrives by email — no account, no password.

Formats
A4 · A3 · A2
What you get
Print-ready PDFs, one per size, with every letterform converted to outlines — nothing to install, nothing to shift.
Subject
code · reference · study

The number of a character in the alphabet is the six bits of data itself. The "=" character carries no data: it fills the string out to four characters, and how many there are shows how many bytes the last chunk held.

ONE BYTE, SIXTEEN SPELLINGS

The byte "f" encodes as Zg== — yet Zh==, Zi== and 13 more strings up to Zv== carry the very same eight bits. The second character gives only two of its six bits to the data, and the rest mean nothing at all.

RFC 4648 requires an encoder to leave those bits at zero and allows a decoder to reject a string in which they are not. That is what makes the encoding canonical: without it the same byte has sixteen spellings and none of them is the right one.

On the sheet

  • The number of a character in the alphabet is the six bits of data itself. The "=" character carries no data: it fills the string out to four characters, and how many there are shows how many bytes the last chunk held.
  • Colour carries meaning, but meaning never rests on colour alone — the sheet reads in black and white.
  • Nothing about how it was made: the sheet carries only what the reader needs.

Printing

  • Three sizes in the archive: A4 — 210×297 mm, A3 — 297×420 mm, A2 — 420×594 mm.
  • All text is converted to outlines. No fonts to install, and nothing shifts on another machine.
  • White background and sparing fills — it prints on a home printer without draining the cartridge.
  • Margins of at least 10 mm: a home printer cannot print to the edge.
  • No stroke thinner than 0.3 mm, so nothing disappears in print.

Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 6 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.

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