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Character encoding

  • Many character sets and encodings have been used in computers
  • In the late 80's, the Unicode Consortium was formed to create an Universal character set
  • The underlying model for Unicode was the character/glyph model: encode characters, not glyphs
  • Characters from existing character sets should be merged, not separately encoded
  • To ensure interoperability with existing character sets, a rule was established that characters already separately encoded in one single character set should not be merged (the "source separation rule")
  • This rule is the cause for some inconistencies and barriers to interoperability