Most countries use Single-Byte Character Sets (SBCS). However, a significant number of countries and people use languages that contain more than 256 written characters. Japanese, Chinese, and Korean have several thousand characters. To store these characters, a Double-Byte Character Set (DBCS) with a total of 16 bits for each character and 65,536 code points (216), is required.
Applications must be able to interpret and recognize doublebyte characters if they are to succeed in the double-byte markets. Software must determine if a byte belongs to a single-byte character, or if it is the first or second byte of a double-byte character. Display of these languages is also difficult because these languages are commonly written right to left.
