Global Text Support with Unicode

When you use your keyboard to type words on your computer, each character that you type is stored on your computer by a number. Every font also has a number assigned to each of its characters. This method of mapping characters to numbers is called character encoding. The idea is that when you type an "a," your computer matches up its code with the code in the selected font, and an "a" shows up on your screen. Simple, right?

For more information on the Unicode standard, visit www.unicode.org.

The problem is that not every computer uses the same encoding system. For example, Mac and Windows use different character encodings. Operating systems in different languages and countries around the world also use a variety of different encodings. Conflicts also exist in that one system may encode a certain character with a number, whereas another system may have a completely different character encoded for that same number. Because there are so many different ways of encoding characters, you can run into a situation where you create a file on one computer, and simply opening that same file on a different computer results in words not appearing correctly. If you've ever typed something on Windows and transferred it to a Mac and noticed that certain characters appear as question marks or disappear completely, you can now understand why that happened.

Besides Unicode support, Illustrator also has fantastic support for Asian languages and type features such as Mojikumi, Kinsoku, and Composite Fonts. To activate these extended features in the English language version of Illustrator, check the Show Asian Options option in the Type preferences panel.

In 1991, a standard was formed called Unicode, which, as its name implies, is a single encoding that can be used to describe every single character, in any language, on any computer platform. The new text engine that was introduced in Illustrator CS uses Unicode, and if you use Unicode-compliant fonts to create your documents, you can pass your documents across the world and have them display correctly on any computer.