Overview: Character encoding and scripts

Character encoding and script handling connect stored subtitle bytes to the characters and reading order intended by the text.

A wrong byte interpretation can produce the wrong characters before a font is involved. Unicode representation then supplies character identities, while right-to-left handling influences their presentation order. These pages locate those stages so an encoding error is investigated differently from a missing glyph or a layout problem.

• Subtitle character encoding
  Character encoding specifies how subtitle bytes become characters, and incorrect decoding can produce mojibake before font rendering begins.

• Unicode in subtitles
  Unicode represents subtitle characters, while code units, grapheme clusters, normalization and glyph shaping describe different text-processing boundaries.

• Right-to-left subtitles
  Right-to-left subtitle rendering resolves logical text order, bidirectional runs and script shaping separately from caption alignment.