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The Unicode Standard

simoncozens.github.io · 6,374 words · saved by 1 readers

When humans exchange information, we use sentences, words, and - most relevantly for our purposes - letters. But computers don’t know anything about letters. Computers only know about numbers, and to be honest, they don’t know much about them, either. Because computers are, ultimately, great big collections of electronic switches, they only know about two numbers: zero, if a switch is off, and one, when a switch is on. By lining up a row of switches, we can represent bigger numbers. These days, computers normally line up eight switches in a unit, called a byte. With eight switches and two states for each switch, we have 2 8 =256 2 8 = 256 possible states in a byte, so we can represent a number between 0 and 255. But still, everything is a number. To move from numbers to letters and store text in a computer, we need to agree on a code. We might decide that when we’re expecting text, the number 1 means “a”, number 2 means “b” and so on. This mapping between numbers and characters is ca

Global Scripts in Unicode How data is stored UTF-16 UTF-8 Character properties Case conversion Normalization and decomposition ICU When humans exchange information, we use sentences, words, and - most relevantly for our purposes - letters. But computers don’t know anything about letters. Computers only know about numbers, and to be honest, they don’t know much about them, either. Because computers are, ultimately, great big collections of electronic switches, they only know about two numbers: zero, if a switch is off, and one, when a switch is on. By lining up a row of switches, we can represe

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