Unicode Explained

If no previous character codes had been taken into account when defining Unicode,

the use of the coding space would undoubtedly be different. It would be based on

grouping by usage. The order of blocks would probably be different too. Now the CJK

characters, for example, have been distributed into blocks in a manner that looks rather

random.

The reasons for making the first two blocks essentially copies of ASCII and ISO 8859-1

are both technical and cultural. Such an assignment helps in efficiency; consider how

ASCII characters are representable each as one octet in UTF-8, still keeping UTF-8

simple. They also help in continuity, since people who have worked with ASCII and

ISO 8859-1 can find their characters easily.

The evolving nature of Unicode also makes some illogical assignments more or less

necessary. New needs have led to allocation of blocks and ranges in a manner that

cannot be smoothly integrated with old allocations. All the different extension blocks

reflect the gradual incorporation of scripts and characters into Unicode.

Questions and Answers

The Unicode web site contains a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section, divided

into topics and categories, at http://www.unicode.org/faq/. You will probably find it very

useful, especially if you take some time now to have a look at its table of contents, so

that you roughly know what you can expect to find there. The following list of