Guest -

You can check out the several threads where people have asked how to get "special characters" to get an idea of what the usefulness might be.

Earlier Windows - and programs under most other operating systems - are limited in the number of characters they can display. Windows, in particular, is "localized" so that the characters you can type - or otherwise enter easily - depend on where you bought your system. In France, you get a default character set with lots of "diacriticals." In Germany I suppose you get at least a bunch of umlauts.

There are shortcut keystrokes - different for each "localization" and methods for adding and using "alternate character pages" in current programs, and you can get specialized (remapped) fonts, but the available methods are cumbersome and somewhat limited.

The Unicode "character set(s)" are intended so that you should be able to give a "character number" (usually just by typing the character) for any character in any language, and whoever you give it to should be able to "see" the correct character. (There's the additional problem that quite a few languages don't write left-to-right, top-to-bottom - which should be accommodated.) In order to use Unicode, your machine must be able to recognize a "character number" that is two bytes long. Conventional older Windows systems can't do that. (There are qualifications to "can't do that," but it would be lengthy.)

A fairly recent thread on "how to type a euro" illustrates the problem somewhat. Quite a few "right" answers don't work on my machine, because they're only "right" for those who bought their machines and software in Europe. What is "right" on my machine doesn't necessarily work for them. We should all be able to do the same thing to get the same character, but that's not the way it is now.

The question is a little "academic" until the ability to use DBCS catches up some. For now, the important(?) thing is to be aware that it (maybe) is coming. IF you plan new stuff, you may want to consider whether its worthwhile to get a system that will allow you to do some of this if, and when, the new character capability "gets here." On the other hand, you might guess that you'll wear out your next system before you this stuff is actually "ready for market," or that you'll just never need it. We've been waiting quite a while now.

John