Unicode
Unicode is a standardised character set that allows all characters in all
languages of the world to be represented in one character set. It makes it
much easier to work with characters and to allow different characters into the
same document eg Chinese, Arabic and Roman.
Usefull resources
The following are a list of URLs for useful information on Unicode:
http://www.eki.ee/letter/ - an online database that will show you what the
characters look like, what characters you need for you language and their
various coding in various other character sets. This is a very useful site.