Unicode Explained

Internationalize Documents, Programs, and Web Sites

Do you need to write a single software product or web site to target multiple platforms, languag¬es, and character sets without re-engineering? There are hundreds of encoding systems for mapping characters to numbers, but Unicode promises a single mapping, which makes a single worldwide product solution possible. It’s no wonder that industry giants like Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Microsoft have all adopted Unicode.

This comprehensive reference contains everything you need to understand Unicode. It takes you on a detailed tour through the complex character world. For starters, it explains how to identify and classify char¬acters—from the common to the specialized. Then it shows you how to type these characters, interpret their properties, and process character data in a robust manner.

The first few chapters teach the basics of Unicode and character data. They provide a firm grasp of the terminology you need to make reference to various components, including:

• Character sets
  
• Fonts and encodings
  
• Glyphs and character repertoires

The middle section offers more detailed information about using Unicode and other character codes:

• Principles and methods behind defining character codes
  
• Some of the widely used codes
  
• Code conversion techniques
  
• Properties of characters
  
• Collation and sorting
  
• Line-breaking rules
  
• Unicode encodings

The final four chapters cover more advanced material, such as programming to support Unicode.

You simply can’t afford to be without the nuggets of valuable information detailed in Unicode Explained.

About the Author
Jukka Korpela is a consultant who specializes in character codes, localization, orthography, usability, and accessibility. After graduating from Helsinki University of Technology, he taught these subjects in the university's Computer Science department and worked on localization and accessibility issues at TIEKE before becoming a full-time author and consultant. His previous books on CSS and XHTML were published in Finland by Docendo press.