Use of UCS as a common reference
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UCS: Universal Character Set (Unicode/ISO 10646)
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Specify behaviour only (as if Unicode was used internally)
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Allow legacy encodings where possible (exception: APIs)
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Declare document encodings (MIME "charset" parameter)
Why Unicode/ISO 10646
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Only universal character repertoire available
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Covers widest possible range
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Provides a way of referencing characters independently of encoding
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Is being updated carefully
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Is widely accepted and used by industry