Karakternormalizáció

Karakternormalizáció is a term used in character encoding and text processing. It refers to the process of converting different representations of characters into a single, consistent form. This is crucial for ensuring that text data can be reliably compared, searched, and processed across different systems and applications. Without normalization, the same character might appear as different byte sequences depending on the encoding used, leading to mismatches and errors.

Common forms of character normalization include handling variations in diacritics (accents), ligatures (combinations of letters), and different Unicode representations of the same visual character. For example, a character with an acute accent might be represented as a base character followed by a combining accent mark, or as a precomposed character that includes the accent. Normalization aims to resolve these differences.

The most widely adopted standard for character normalization is defined by the Unicode Consortium. It specifies several normalization forms, such as Normalization Form Canonical Decomposition (NFD), Normalization Form Canonical Composition (NFC), Normalization Form Compatibility Decomposition (NFKD), and Normalization Form Compatibility Composition (NFKC). NFC and NFD are the most common, focusing on canonical equivalence, while NFKC and NFKD also consider compatibility equivalents. Choosing the appropriate normalization form depends on the specific requirements of the application.