Where Are We?

In this chapter, we laid down the foundation for all .NET applications. .NET applications are based on the .NET Framework, which is based on Unicode. Unicode enables us to support most of the languages in the world and many character sets for other purposes using a single unconfused system. The .NET Framework runs on both 32-bit Unicode Windows and 16-bit code page Windows, and adds back an approximation of Unicode functionality to these legacy operating systems, which allows you to write a single-source application that runs across all versions of Windows. Your applications are, of course, limited to the functionality of the underlying operating system and for this reason, you should always strive to use not only Unicode Windows, but also the most recent releases and service packs. Finally, language resources used by the .NET Framework are retrieved from .NET Framework Language Packs, not by the language version of the .NET Framework Redistributable Pack.