Chapter 2 -- Unicode

[Previous] [Next]

Chapter 2

With Microsoft Windows becoming more and more popular around the world, it is increasingly important that we, as developers, target the various international markets. It was once common for U.S. versions of software to ship as much as six months prior to the shipping of international versions. But increasing international support in the operating system is making it easier to produce applications for international markets and therefore is reducing the time lag between distribution of the U.S. and international versions of our software.

Windows has always offered support to help developers localize their applications. An application can get country-specific information from various functions and can examine Control Panel settings to determine the user's preferences. Windows even supports different fonts for our applications.

I decided to present this chapter early in the book because considering Unicode is a fundamental step in the development of any application. Issues regarding Unicode are discussed in just about every chapter and all the sample applications presented in this book are "Unicode-ready." If you are developing for Microsoft Windows 2000 or Microsoft Windows CE, you should be developing with Unicode, period. If you are developing for Microsoft Windows 98, you have some decisions to make. Windows 98 concerns are also discussed in this chapter.