Unicode Encoding Explained: A Beginner’s Guide for Everyone

Introduction

Ever wondered how computers interpret and display text written in English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, or even emojis? The solution is Unicode encoding. It is a worldwide standard that computers and devices use to represent text uniformly across platforms.

Before Unicode, every language and typeface had its own encoding scheme, which caused compatibility difficulties and illegible writing. Unicode is now the basis for all current digital communication.

In this guide, we will explain in simple words how Unicode encoding works.

What is Unicode?

Unicode is an international standard that allocates a unique number, termed a code point, to every character used in human languages and symbols.

For instance:

With these code points, computers can detect characters independently of the typeface or operating system they are using.

Unicode - Why was it created?

Before Unicode, there were several ways for encoding characters. These include ASCII and proprietary font encodings. The same data was sometimes interpreted differently by various applications and systems.

Typical difficulties were:

• Text appears as random symbols (mojibake).
• Files that cannot be opened on another machine.
• Challenges to share multilingual content.
• Indian language support is not available.

Unicode fixed this by providing one global standard.

Unicode Encoding: How It Works

Unicode operates in simple steps:

Step 1: Give each character a unique code point

Each letter, number, symbol, or emoji has a distinct value.

Some examples include:

These code points are independent of language.

Step 2: Code Points Are Stored Using Encoding Forms

Computers do not store “U+0041” directly. Rather, they employ encoding schemes like:

• UTF-8
• UTF-16
• UTF-32

These formats translate Unicode characters to binary data that can be processed and stored by computers.

What is UTF-8?

UTF-8 is the most prevalent encoding type of Unicode.

Advantages of UTF-8 are:

• ASCII compatible
• Supports all languages in the world
• Saves on storage space
• Used in webpages, databases, and apps

Most of the websites on the internet utilize UTF-8 encoding.

Unicode Encoding Example

Let we write:

Unicode codepoints:

• H = U+0048
• e = U+0065
• l = U+006C
• l = U+006C
• o = U+006F

UTF-8 turns these code points into binary bytes that are stored and transferred by computers.

When you open the file, your browser reads the bytes and shows the right characters.

Unicode Support for Indian Languages

In Indian scripts, thousands of characters are encoded in Unicode. This includes:

• Devanagari (Hindi & Marathi)
• ગુજરાતી (Gujarati)
• Bengali
• Tamil
• తెలుగు (Telugu)
• ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada)
• Malayalam
• Panjabi

This helps Indian languages to function smoothly on the internet, mobile devices, and applications.

Unicode Vs Old Fonts

Older font systems such as ShreeLipi (including Tamil Shree Lipi Font), Kruti Dev, and Akruti used proprietary encodings. These typefaces have various character mappings and required special font files.

Old font problems:

• Text often hyphenates or breaks on another machine.
• Search engines cannot comprehend and index the material properly.
• We have copy-paste problems (getting garbage characters).
• Poor web compatibility.

Unicode overcomes these challenges by employing standard code points that are known across the world.

Unicode is Not the Same as Fonts

A lot of people think typefaces are the same as Unicode. However, Unicode specifies the characters, whereas typefaces specify how they look.

For example, the letter "A" maintains the same Unicode character, although it might appear differently in Arial, Times New Roman, or Calibri fonts.

Similarly, the following typefaces can be used to depict Devanagari characters:

• Mangala
• Noto Sans Devanagari
• Aparajita

The underlying Unicode values are unaffected.

Real Life Example

When you write "नमस्कार":

1. The keyboard sends Unicode characters.
2. Your computer saves them in UTF-8.
3. The browser reads the encoded data.
4. The text is shown on the screen using the chosen font.

Therefore, the same content will be shown appropriately on Windows, Android, iPhone, and websites.

Conclusion

Unicode encoding is the global language that enables computers to represent text uniformly across various devices and applications. Unicode assigns a unique code point to each character and supports languages from all around the globe, including Hindi and Marathi, allowing them to be shown correctly using encodings such as UTF-8.

This standard has enabled communication worldwide, multilingual websites, and digital publication. Unicode is still the underpinning of contemporary computers and the internet, even as more and more enterprises abandon outdated typefaces.

Frequently Asked Questions