This section provides summary of unique features of the Unicode standard.
Comparing with other character coding standard, Unicode has the following unique
features:
Full 16-bit coding. Each code is 16-bit number. No restriction. None of the
16 bits is reserved for any special purposes.
Big enough to handle all existing written languages and symbols. 16 bits gives
65536 code values. It can be expended to paired 16-bit codes to cover millions of
code values.
Characters in the same language are coded in groups and ordered according their
natural sequence whenever it's possible.
No escape sequences. No shift states.
Common characters (letters) in languages are unified into code element. The biggest
example is the unification of Chinese/Japanese/Korean (CJK) ideographs into one common
set of code elements.
Another interesting feature of Unicode is the use of equivalent sequences.
Different sequences of code elements that represent the same
semantic value are called equivalent sequences.
For example, the small letter "a" and the circumflex accent "^"
can be represented by a single code element: U+00E2 (LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH
CIRCUMFLEX). It can also be represented by a sequence of two code elements:
U+0061 (LATIN SMALL LETTER A) and U+0302 (COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT). So U+00E2
and U+0061U+0302.
