Here's a breakdown of the key issues and why Unicode was the solution:
* Limited Character Sets: Early computer systems used ASCII, which could only represent 128 characters, primarily English letters, numbers, and punctuation. This was insufficient for representing characters from other languages.
* Code Page Conflicts: Different countries and regions developed their own character sets (code pages) to represent their specific languages. This created a multitude of incompatible systems, making it difficult to exchange text between them.
* Data Corruption and Misinterpretation: When text from one code page was sent to a system using a different code page, it often resulted in data corruption and misinterpretations.
* Growing Need for Multilingual Support: As global communication and digital content increased, the need to support a wide range of languages and scripts became more crucial.
Unicode's Solution:
* Unified Character Set: Unicode provides a single, comprehensive character set encompassing characters from virtually every writing system in the world. This ensures consistent representation and interpretation of text across different platforms and languages.
* Universal Encoding: Unicode defines a standard way to encode characters, allowing for seamless exchange of text between different systems and applications.
* Wide Range of Support: Unicode is supported by major operating systems, programming languages, and software applications, making it the de facto standard for multilingual text processing.
In essence, Unicode revolutionized how computers handle text, enabling seamless communication and content creation across diverse languages and cultures.