Unique Features of Unicode

This section provides summary of unique features of the Unicode standard.

Comparing with other character coding standard, Unicode has the following unique features:

Another interesting feature of Unicode is the use of equivalent sequences. Different sequences of code elements that represent the same semantic value are called equivalent sequences. For example, the small letter "a" and the circumflex accent "^" can be represented by a single code element: U+00E2 (LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH CIRCUMFLEX). It can also be represented by a sequence of two code elements: U+0302 (COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT) and U+0061 (LATIN SMALL LETTER A). So U+00E2 and U+0302U+0061 are equivalent sequences. See the demonstration table below:

1. U+00E2             = â
2. U+0302U+0061       = ̂a
3. U+0061U+0302       = 
4. U+0061U+0302U+0062 = âb
5. U+0062U+0302U+0061 = b̂a
6. U+0062U+0302U+0066 = b̂b

The above table shows how a Web browser handles a sequence that has a "combining" element:

Note that when send the same table to a PDF generation tool, "combining" sequences may not be respected.

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 Character Sets and Encodings

 ASCII Character Set and Encoding

 GB2312 Character Set and Encoding

 GB18030 Character Set and Encoding

 JIS X0208 Character Set and Encodings

Unicode Character Set

 What Is Unicode

 Examples of Unicode Characters

Unique Features of Unicode

 Unicode Standard Releases

 Code Point Blocks

 Unicode 13.0 Character Samples

 Unicode 8.0 Character Samples

 Unicode 7.0 Character Samples

 Unicode 6.0 Character Samples

 Unicode 5.0 Character Samples

 Unicode 4.0 Character Samples

 UTF-8 (Unicode Transformation Format - 8-Bit)

 UTF-16, UTF-16BE and UTF-16LE Encodings

 UTF-32, UTF-32BE and UTF-32LE Encodings

 Python Language and Unicode Characters

 Java Language and Unicode Characters

 Character Encoding in Java

 Character Set Encoding Maps

 Encoding Conversion Programs for Encoded Text Files

 Using Notepad as a Unicode Text Editor

 Using Microsoft Word as a Unicode Text Editor

 Using Microsoft Excel as a Unicode Text Editor

 Unicode Fonts

 Archived Tutorials

 References

 Full Version in PDF/EPUB