Unicode Explained

encoding that does not support all the characters needed, since you can use special

notations like character references to overcome the limitations of an encoding.

3. Select software that lets you work conveniently with the encoding and with the

characters you need. In practice, you may need to consider what software is avail-

able before you decide on the encoding. Such topics were discussed in Chapter 2.

4. Make sure that the web server sends information about the encoding in one way or

another, and possibly in different ways. This is explained in this chapter.

5. Use language markup if you know how to use it properly, but do not rely on it. It

mostly has no effect except possibly on typography (font selection) on some

browsers. See Chapter 7.

6. Worry about fonts if you wish or need to, but do not think that font settings solve

any of the fundamental problems listed here. Rather, setting fonts is like painting

a house, once you have otherwise built it up. Font issues mostly do not belong to

the scope of this book. You would normally use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to

affect fonts in web authoring, but you might also create a PDF version of a docu-

ment, with fonts embedded into it.

Information About Encoding

When data is sent over the Internet, it needs to be encoded into digital format, ulti-

mately as octets and bits. If the recipient program does not know the overall format