Unicode Demystified

Chapter 2. A Brief History of Character Encoding

To understand Unicode fully, it's helpful to have a good sense of where we came from and what the whole business of character encoding involves. Unicode didn't just spring fully grown from the forehead of Zeus; it's the latest step in a history that actually predates the digital computer, having its roots in telecommunications. Unicode is not the first attempt to solve the problem it addresses, and Unicode is also in its third major revision. To understand the design decisions that led to Unicode 3.0, it's useful to understand what worked and what didn't work in Unicode's many predecessors.

This chapter is entirely background material. If you want to jump right in and start looking at the features ...