Unicode in Microsoft Windows: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:59, 26 October 2024

Revision as of 20:54, 26 October 2024

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Before 2019, Microsoft emphasized UTF-16 (i.e. -W API), but has since recommended to use [[UTF-8]] (at least in some cases),<ref name="Microsoft-UTF-8" /> on Windows and [[Xbox]] (and in other of its products), even states "UTF-8 is the universal code page for internationalization [and] UTF-16 [... is] a unique burden that Windows places on code that targets multiple platforms. [..] Windows [is] moving forward to support UTF-8 to remove this unique burden [resulting] in fewer internationalization issues in apps and games".<ref name="Microsoft GDK" />

Microsoft's [[UCRT]] supports UTF-8 (and it's a redistributable available down to [[Windows XP]],<ref>{{Cite web |date=2022-02-08 |title=Universal CRT deployment |url=https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/windows/universal-crt-deployment?view=msvc-170#deployment-on-microsoft-windows-xp |access-date=2024-10-26 |website=learn.microsoft.com |language=en-us}}</ref> but included by default in Windows 10).<ref>{{Cite web |title=MSYS2 - Environments |url=https://www.msys2.org/docs/environments/ |access-date=2024-10-26 |website=www.msys2.org |language=en}}</ref>

A large amount of Microsoft documentation uses the word "Unicode" to refer explicitly to the UTF-16 encoding. Anything else, including UTF-8, is not "Unicode" in Microsoft's outdated language (while UTF-8 and UTF-16 are both Unicode according to [[Unicode|the Unicode Standard]], or encodings/"transformation formats" thereof).