Unicode: a universal character code
Jürgen Bettels, F. Avery Bishop · 1993
A universal character encoding is required to produce software that can be localized for any language or that can process and communicate data in any language. The Unicode standard is the product of a joint effort of information technology companies and individual experts; its encoding has been accepted by ISO as the international standard ISO/IEC 10646. Unicode defines 16-bit codes for the characters of most scripts used in the world's languages. Encoding for some missing scripts will be added over time. The Unicode standard defines a set of rules that help implementors build text-processing and rendering engines. For Digital, Unicode represents a strategic direction in internationalization technology. Many software-producing companies have also announced future support for Unicode.