Unicode compress: does size really matter?

Abstract

The Unicode standard provides several algorithms, techniques, and strategies for assigning, transmitting, and compressing Unicode characters. These techniques allow Unicode data to be represented in a concise format in several contexts. In this paper we examine several techniques and strategies for compressing Unicode data using the programs gzip and bzip. Unicode compression algorithms known as SCSU and BOCU are also examined. As far as size is concerned, algorithms designed specifically for Unicode may not be necessary.