The Unicode standard is a numbering system; fonts require individual drawings to represent characters.

There have been a variety of Unicode encoding methods over the years, but modern programs dealing with strings will probably be using UTF-8 encoding — and you should too.

By letting users code for directionality (definitely to the right, maybe even going up or down), Unicode can adopt Emoji 15.1 to cultures that read both left-to-right and right-to-left.

Aside from the new emoji, Unicode 7.0 brings new characters for several currencies including the Russian ruble, as well as more symbols and extensions to existing character scripts.

Following a pandemic-related delay, the Unicode Consortium has finalized Unicode 14.0. In all, the update adds 838 characters to the text standard. Of those 838 characters, 37 represent new emoji ...