Why Use Unicode Font Encodings?
You may be asking yourself, “Why go to all of the bother of using yet another font encoding? After all, I already have five font encodings on my computer so that I can read Belarusian, Polish, Russian, German, French, etc. Who needs even more fonts?” As briefly as possible: Unicode is set up to allow reading (and writing) of all modern languages on our computer systems, no matter who manufactures our computers, no matter what operating system we use, no matter what program (application) we are using. That is the advantage of Unicode. Most of the font encodings currently in use are operating-system-specific, for example, the very popular for Cyrillic “Windows 1251” (in the former USSR). But if you prefer a Macintosh or a Linux (UNIX) computer, you cannot read these materials (without going to a lot of trouble). Of course, a typical Unicode font does not have all of the encodings possible for all modern languages. When you go to a source for the font (and also once you have installed it
