Unicode?
When you develop a mono-lingual application are you using unicode/utf8???
I find it really unneccessary (even though many people would disagree), to use Unicode in an Arabic-only application or web app, I really recommend using the standard encoding of arabic text (about 99% of the worldwide arabic electronic text is encoded in windows-1256). I really would have preferred to use iso8859-6 but nobody uses it.
I only see utf8/unicode as an option if you need to mix many languages in the same string or database column.
Here’s the comparison for arabic text:
| Feature | UTF-8 | Win-1256 |
|---|---|---|
| Size of a character | VariableMostly 2 bytes, except for numbers, english text, spaces, and special characters (i.e. normal ascii text) that use 1 byte | 1 byte |
| Finding a character by byte counting/shifting | impossible | easy |
| Number of Languages in the same string or database column | infinite | 2 (Arabic and English) |
| Handling Strings | special | normal |
