SVG, as an application of XML, supports Unicode and thus provides universal 16-bit encoding of the world's principal languages. SVG also provides a mechanism for controlling glyphs to draw text strings. This ability allows access to glyphs that are not defined in Unicode, and conformance to the guidelines for normalizing character data for enhanced interoperability. SVG also supports vertical and vertical-ideographic text (through the "writing-mode" property), and Arabic bi-directional text (through the "direction" and "unicode-bidi" properties).

To put characters other than ISO-8859-1 into an SVG graphic, you need to use the correct Unicode character values. They can be entered directly, using a Unicode-enabled editor or they can be typed as numeric character references. For example: &#x1122 (This is a Korean character.) The Adobe SVG viewer supports US-ASCII, ISO-8859-1, UTF-16, and UTF-8 encodings. For example:

<text x="2.5cm" y="1.5cm"><tspan style="font-family:times">This</tspan>

<tspan style="font-family:hebrew">&#x05DC;</tspan><tspan style="font-family:times">SVG.</tspan></text>

Then to display the characters, the correct font needs to be installed. Adobe Illustrator will create a small "CEF" font so that anyone can view the SVG - even if they don't have the font installed. For more information, please see the Unicode links in the Community section.

Next lesson: Accessibility and scalability