The Unicode Blog

Release candidate for Unicode 6.1 character data

2012-01-06T10:08:00.000-08:00

Because Unicode is at the foundation of all modern software using text, it is important to verify that problems are not introduced with new versions. If your implementation uses Unicode data, please download and test the final release candidate of the Unicode 6.1 data (UCD) with your implementation now. Please note that the Unicode Collation Algorithm (UCA) and the Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing are correlated with version 6.1; if you have an implementation of them, please check the data below as well.

That data can be found in:

Unicode

http://unicode.org/Public/6.1.0/ucd/ (data, semicolon-delimited)
http://unicode.org/Public/6.1.0/ucdxml/ (data, xml)
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr44/proposed.html(documentation)

http://unicode.org/Public/UCA/6.1.0/ (data)
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr10/proposed.html(documentation)

IDNA compatibility

http://unicode.org/Public/idna/6.1.0/ (data)
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr46/proposed.html(documentation)

For more information, see http://unicode.org/versions/beta.html.

Note that at this point in the process, no substantive changes can be made unless:

a problem is found in carrying out the actions directed by the Unicode Technical Committee for the release, or
an editorial problem is found in the data comments or documentation.

The Unicode Consortium is planning to move up the release date of Unicode 6.1 (UCD and UAXes) to January instead of February, so any final comments should be made by January 6th. You can send your comments using the Contact Form (http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html).

The draft code charts for Unicode 6.1 have also been updated. We encourage users to check the code charts carefully to verify correctness of the new characters added to Unicode 6.1 and to ensure that there are no regressions in glyph shapes for previously encoded characters. For links to the charts, see http://unicode.org/versions/beta.html.

Two New Public Review Issues: UTR #36, UTS #39

2011-12-13T12:20:00.000-08:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted two new issues for public
review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/

Review periods for the new items close on January 30, 2012.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents.
Briefly, the new issues are:

Issue #208 Proposed Update UTR #36: Unicode Security Considerations
http://www.unicode.org/review/pri208/

This UTR is being prepared for an update to bring the IDNA 2008
references up to date. Public review and comment is invited on this draft.

Issue #209 Proposed Update Unicode Technical Standard #39 Unicode
Security Mechanisms
http://www.unicode.org/review/pri209/

This UTS is being prepared for an update to align with Unicode 6.1.
Public review and comment is invited on this draft.

To supply feedback on these issues, see
http://www.unicode.org/review/#feedback .

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CLDR v21 Milestone 2 available for testing

2011-12-13T12:19:00.000-08:00

Milestone releases of CLDR provide an opportunity to test a snapshot of the next version of CLDR; they are not intended for use in production. CLDR v21 is not a data submission release; instead, the CLDR group is engaged in improving tools, and making specific changes to data.

Note that the CLDR v21 release is intended to support Unicode 6.1, and depends on some new Unicode 6.1 property values for grapheme break and line break. This Milestone 2 release depends on values from the beta versions of Unicode 6.1 data files.

New additions in this Milestone 2 release include:

Changes to the segmentation data to match Unicode 6.1. The behaviors associated with the former "th" grapheme break tailoring and "he" line break tailoring have been moved into the root behavior, so those tailorings are no longer necessary and have been deleted.
Two new calendar element structures needed for support of the Chinese lunar calendar (and other calendars such as the Hindu lunar calendars); for more information see http://cldr.unicode.org/development/development-process/design-proposals/chinese-calendar-support:

Addition of the <monthPatterns> element structure to indicate how to modify standard month names to mark intercalary leap months, as well as (for some calendars) months adjacent to leap months and combined months. This is supported via the standard month pattern characters 'M' and 'L', so the pattern character 'l' (SMALL LETTER L) formerly provided as a way to mark leap months has been deprecated (it was never supported by underlying data).
Addition of the <cyclicNameSets> element structure to support cyclic names for years (and other calendar entities in some calendars).

A new "ar_001" locale for Modern Standard Arabic as the default content for "ar". This will permit the "ar_EG" locale (formerly the default content for "ar") to use some Egypt-specific names.
Addition of codes for South Sudan
Other specific data fixes such as for Ukrainian collation, Ewe day periods, various metazones, and some specific translation errors.

Highlights in the Milestone 1 release (Sept. 29) included:

Work in support of pending -t- extension in BCP47
Deprecation of 'commonlyUsed' element in timezone names
Removal of "whole-locale" aliases (data for constructing is in supplementaldata.xml)
First cut at incorporating European Ordering Rules (EOR)

The data is available from SVN under "tag/release-21-d02" as described in

http://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads#latest_draft_version

The full list of changes in this milestone is

http://unicode.org/cldr/trac/query?milestone=21m2

The current draft LDML specification is

http://unicode.org/repos/cldr/trunk/docs/web/tr35.html

UAX #15 and Chapter 3 of Unicode Standard Updated Again for Unicode 6.1 Beta

2011-10-06T14:39:00.000-07:00

The text of Chapter 3, Conformance of the Unicode Standard core specification, and the Version 6.1.0 Proposed Update for UAX #15, Unicode Normalization Forms have been updated for the ongoing beta review for Version 6.1.0. These latest changes move the example code for various normative Hangul-related algorithms into the immediate vicinity of the definition of those algorithms in the core specification. Please see PRI #191 and PRI #206 for details. http://www.unicode.org/review/pri191/ http://www.unicode.org/review/pri206/

Please also note that the public review periods for many open issues, especially the 6.1 beta review, will be closing on October 24 ahead of the November UTC meeting.

New version of UTR #45 published

2011-10-06T14:37:00.000-07:00

An new version of UTR #45, U-Source Ideographs has been published. http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr45/tr45-5.html This version corrects the syntax of U-source identifiers to match ISO/IEC 10646 data files. It also introduces a new syntax with "UCI" labels to identify U-sources for unified ideographs which have been "orphaned" of their original sources.

Proposed Draft UTR #50, Unicode Properties for Vertical Text Layout now available

2011-10-05T14:14:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public
review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/pri207/

Review period for the new item closes on October 24, 2011.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents. Briefly, the new issue is:

PRI #207, Proposed Draft UTR #50, Unicode Properties for Vertical Text Layout

The layout of Japanese text follows different conventions than the layout of Western texts. Many of the requirements are described in the W3C Working Group Note "Requirements for Japanese Text Layout". This new proposed draft technical report describes two Unicode character properties which can be used to implement those requirements.

This is a moderated Public Review Issue. An unmoderated discussion takes place on the designated forum:
http://www.unicode.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=35
The moderator of this PRI will summarize the discussion and provide it as formal feedback to the Unicode Technical Committee. Towards the end of the PRI, formal feedback will also be accepted from other parties, if they feel that the summary does not reflect accurately their concerns.

PRI #185 has been modified

2011-09-23T17:39:00.000-07:00

PRI 185 Extension of UBA for improved display of URL/IRIs has been modified as per discussion in the Unicode Technical Committee, based on feedback received. It is also now a moderated public review issue, to allow for extended informal discussion of the issues. For details, see http://www.unicode.org/review/pri185/. A forum has been created for this PRI, and further discussion should take place there, rather than via the email lists. See http://www.unicode.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=34

Unicode 6.1 Beta Review

2011-09-19T17:56:00.000-07:00

Unicode 6.1 Beta Review

Mountain View, CA, USA – September 19, 2011 – The Unicode® Consortium today announced the start of beta review for the forthcoming Unicode 6.1.0. All beta feedback must be submitted by October 24, 2011.

Unicode is the foundation for all modern software and communications around the world, including all modern operating systems, browsers, and smart phones; modern web protocols (HTML, XML,...); and internationalized domain names. Thus it is important to ensure a smooth transition to each new version of the Unicode Standard. Software developers and other experts are strongly encouraged to review the beta data files and documentation for Unicode 6.1.0 carefully, and to provide any feedback regarding errors or other issues to the Unicode Consortium. Software developers can also get an early start in testing their programs with the beta data files so they they will be ready for the release of Unicode 6.1.0 in February, 2012.

See http://www.unicode.org/versions/beta-6.1.0.html, for information about testing the 6.1.0 beta.
See http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode6.1.0/ for the current draft summary of Unicode 6.1.0.

About the Unicode Consortium

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard and related globalization standards.

The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum of corporations and organizations in the computer and information processing industry. Members are: Adobe Systems, Apple, Google, Government of Andhra Pradesh, Goverment of Bangladesh, Government of India, IBM, Microsoft, Monotype Imaging, Oracle, Rearden Commerce, SAP, Tamil Virtual University, The Society for Natural Language Technology Research, The University of California (Berkeley), Yahoo!, plus well over a hundred Associate, Liaison, and Individual members.

For more information, please contact the Unicode Consortium http://www.unicode.org/contacts.html.

Proposed Update UAX #14 now availalbe for Unicode 6.1

2011-09-02T15:03:00.000-07:00

The Proposed Update for UAX #14 has been substantially updated with changes intended for Unicode 6.1. These changes include:

Add rule 21a, don't break after Hebrew + hyphen.
Introduce character class HL (Hebrew Letter).
Include the proposal to move small kana from class NS to class ID, to align UAX 14 more closely with CSS "normal" behavior.

Details are on the PRI page for this UAX: http://www.unicode.org/review/pri190/

PRI #205: Proposed addition of AL MARK and LEVEL DIRECTION MARK

2011-09-02T15:02:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/pri205/
Review period for the new item closes October 24, 2011. Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents. Briefly, the new issue is:

PRI #205 Proposed addition of AL MARK and LEVEL DIRECTION MARK

The UTC is considering proposals for two characters to help address various difficult issues in bidirectional text layout. These two characters are similar to the already-encoded LRM and RLM.

1. The proposed AL MARK (ALM) provides a direction mark with Bidi_Class AL in order to complete the set of direction marks with strong direction classes (L, R, AL). It requires no additional Bidi_Class value or change to the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (UBA).

2. The proposed LEVEL DIRECTION MARK (LDM) behaves like a direction mark which dynamically takes on the resolved direction associated with the current embedding level. While the optimum implementation would use a new Bidi_Class value, this is prohibited by the Unicode Character Encoding Stability Policy. Several alternatives are described. Note: In earlier discussions the LDM was referred to as EMBEDDING LEVEL MARK (ELM).

Please see the background document for details, including alternative implementation options.

PRI #204: Proposed Update for UTS #46: Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing

2011-09-02T15:00:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public review and comment. Details are on the following web page: http://www.unicode.org/review/

Review period for the new item closes on October 24, 2011.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents. Briefly, the new issue is:

PRI #204 Proposed Update for UTS #46: Unicode IDNA Compatibility
Processing
http://www.unicode.org/review/pri204/

This proposed update aligns with Unicode 6.1, and includes the following changes:

Changed text to be more version-independent.
Updated figures in Table 4.
Added NV8 values to Table 2b, Data File Fields and to Section 8, Conformance Testing.

To supply feedback on this issue, see
http://www.unicode.org/review/#feedback .

Proposed Update UAX #42 for Unicode 6.1 now available for public review

2011-09-01T17:17:00.000-07:00

Unicode Standard Annex #42, Unicode Character Database in XML, will be updated for Unicode 6.1. The proposed update is now available for general public review and comment.
Review period for this issue closes October 24, 2011. Details are on the following web page: http://www.unicode.org/review/pri198/
Changes include:

Updated the patterns for kIRG_USource and kMandarin.
New values for the jg attribute: Rohingya_Yeh.
New values for the script attribute: Cakm, Merc, Mero, Plrd, Shrd, Sora, Takr.
The values of the ccc are now restricted to 0..254, instead of 0..255.
New value for the age attribute: 6.1.

To supply feedback on this issue, see http://www.unicode.org/review/#feedback .

PRI #203: Proposed Update UTS #10: Unicode Collation Algorithm

2011-08-30T17:55:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/

Review period for the new item closes on October 24, 2011.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents. Briefly, the new issue is:

PRI #203 Proposed Update for UTS #10: Unicode Collation Algorithm
http://www.unicode.org/review/pri203/

This proposed update aligns with Unicode 6.1, and includes the following changes:

A major revision to the ordering of variable characters into groups, separating punctuation and symbols. Some other characters have changed ordering as well.
A new option for sorting, IgnoreSP, that ignores (shifts) only whitespace and punctuation (and not general symbols)
Clarifications or fixes to text on soft-hyphen, contiguous weights, and collation grapheme clusters.
A new section on asymmetric search.
Review notes for new UCA verification tables, and several other areas where the text will be changed.

To supply feedback on this issue, see
http://www.unicode.org/review/#feedback .

New Unicode Acknowledgements Page

2011-08-29T17:27:00.000-07:00

The Consortium is pleased to announce a new section on our website devoted to acknowledging the many contributors to the Unicode Standard and its related standards: http://www.unicode.org/acknowledgements/

Expect to see additional changes to our font acknowledgments section, as well as the addition of new names as the information becomes available.

PRI #202: Extensions to NameAliases.txt for Unicode 6.1.0

2011-08-26T14:04:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/pri202/

Review periods for the new items close on October 24, 2011.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents. Briefly, the new issue is:

PRI #202: Extensions to NameAliases.txt for Unicode 6.1.0

The UTC is planning to extend the format and content of the Unicode Character Database file NameAliases.txt for Unicode 6.1.0. In addition to the current scope of NameAliases.txt, which covers the definition of formal name aliases for characters whose names have serious mistakes in them, the intent is to add various standard and de facto aliases for control characters, which have no names defined for them in the Unicode Standard, as well as various character abbreviations which are in widespread use.

Details of the proposal and draft data file are available on the public review issue page: http://www.unicode.org/review/pri202/

To supply feedback on this issue, see http://www.unicode.org/review/#feedback .

UTS #37 Updated to Version 3

2011-08-18T14:50:00.000-07:00

A new version of UTS #37, Unicode Ideographic Variation Selectors is now available. Please see: http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr37/tr37-7.html In this version, there are new requirements for registrations as well as several editorial updates and clarifications.

Proposed new characters updated in Pipeline Table

2011-08-11T20:16:00.000-07:00

The Pipeline Table for proposed new characters has been updated to reflect recent decisions by the UTC. Changes include the approval of characters for Grantha and several other historic scripts, and many new symbols to cover the popular sets of Wingdings. Please see http://www.unicode.org/alloc/Pipeline.html .

The information in the Pipeline Table is intended only to summarize the interim status of the committee progress on processing new character proposals. The Pipeline Table a good place to find out what's on the horizon for future versions of the Unicode Standard, before the encoding is finalized. However, because the committee review continues, the information is necessarily subject to change. Products should be created based only on final, public release of a version of the standard.

Public Review Issues Extended

2011-08-10T19:11:00.000-07:00

The closing dates of the Public Review Issues for all proposed updates to Unicode Standard Annexes for Unicode Version 6.1 have been extended to October 24, 2011. The text of UAX #44 has also been updated to take into account feedback reviewed at the UTC meeting last week.

http://www.unicode.org/review/

Review periods for the following issues have also been extended to October 24, 2011. The text of PRI #182 and PRI #185 will be changed, and a separate announcement will be made about the changes.

177 Proposed Update UTS #46: Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing
182 Proposed Update UTS #18: Unicode Regular Expressions
185 Revision of UBA for improved display of URL/IRIs

To supply feedback on any of these issues, see http://www.unicode.org/review/#feedback .

PRI #201 - Proposed Update UTR #45 now available

2011-07-27T10:55:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/pri201/

A proposed update for UTR #45 has been posted. This update corrects the syntax of U-source identifiers to match ISO/IEC 10646 data files. It also introduces a new syntax with "UCI" labels to identify U-sources for unified ideographs which have been "orphaned" of their original sources.

Note that the review period for the proposed update has been compressed, so that the updated U-source listing and syntax will be available for use in the 10646 3rd Edition. Review feedback should be posted in time for consideration at the UTC meeting scheduled for August 1 - 5, 2011.

To supply feedback on this issue, see http://www.unicode.org/review/#feedback

Proposed Updates to Unicode Standard Annexes for Unicode 6.1

2011-07-25T19:18:00.000-07:00

The proposed update documents for some Unicode Standard Annexes have been updated. These updates include:

UAX #15: Added an implementation note about using 255 as an implementation specific value for optimization of tables containing Canonical_Combining_Class values.

UAX #29: Updated the discussion of legacy grapheme clusters for Thai. Moved the section on Hangul syllable boundary determination to a new section in this UAX, from Chapter 3 of the Core Specification. Made other small editorial fixes.

UAX #31: Supplied the recommended usage for identifiers for new scripts encoded in Unicode 6.1. Clarified the status of lists of Other_ID_Start and Other_ID_Continue characters.

Call for Bulldog Award Nominations

2011-07-25T19:07:00.000-07:00

Dear Unicode community,

As many of you already know, the Unicode Consortium sponsors an annual award for outstanding personal contributions to the philosophy and dissemination of the Unicode Standard. Known as the "Bulldog Award," it is presented at the Unicode conference to recognize "those tenacious champions of Unicode who have produced solid achievements in promoting its use around the globe".

The Consortium invites the Unicode community to nominate up to two people they believe are most deserving of this award. Nominations should include a brief rationale why the candidate would be a good choice. Please check http://unicode.org/conference/bulldog.html to see a list of past winners and send nominations to magda@unicode.org with "Bulldog Award nomination" in the subject line by August 29, 2011.

Executive officers and staff of the Unicode Consortium are not eligible for the award.

Thank you for your time.

Magda Danish

Senior Administrative Director

The Unicode Consortium

Unicode Releases Common Locale Data Repository, Version 2.0.1

2011-07-18T19:46:00.000-07:00

Mountain View, CA, July 18, 2011 - The Unicode® Consortium announced today the release of a new version of the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (Unicode CLDR 2.0.1), providing key building blocks for software to support the world's languages.

CLDR 2.0.1 is an minor release, with no new translations. It includes about 80 changes that were not ready for CLDR 2.0, including fixes for collation, number spellout, format consistency, and metazone (timezone) data. It also now provides descriptions for all of the bcp47 data items in CLDR. For more information on what else has changed since the 2.0 release, see the CLDR 2.0.1 Release Note.

Unicode CLDR is by far the largest and most extensive standard repository of locale data. This data is used by a wide spectrum of companies for their software internationalization and localization: adapting software to the conventions of different languages for such common software tasks as formatting of dates, times, time zones, numbers, and currency values; sorting text; choosing languages or countries by name; transliterating different alphabets; and many others. Unicode CLDR 2.0.1 is part of the Unicode locale data project, together with the Unicode Locale Data Markup Language (LDML: http://unicode.org/reports/tr35/). LDML is an XML format used for general interchange of locale data, such as in Microsoft's .NET.

For web pages with different views of CLDR data, see http://cldr.unicode.org/index/charts. For more information about the Unicode CLDR project (including charts) see http://cldr.unicode.org/.

PRI #200: Draft UTR #49, Unicode Character Categories

2011-07-13T16:48:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/

Review period for the new item closes on July 27, 2011.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents. Briefly, the new issue is:

PRI #200 Draft UTR #49: Unicode Character Categories

This document presents an approach to the categorization of Unicode characters, and documents data files that implementers can use for defining and labeling Unicode character categories.

To supply feedback on this issue, please see http://www.unicode.org/review/#feedback

Proposed Update UAXes for Unicode 6.1

2011-07-07T13:58:00.000-07:00

Proposed updates for most Unicode Standard Annexes for Version 6.1 of the Unicode Standard have been posted for public review. See http://www.unicode.org/review/ for details and links to the various documents.

Review periods for provision of feedback on these proposed updates close on July 25, 2011 for the August UTC meeting, but there will be further opportunities for feedback on the annexes after that August meeting.

To supply feedback on these issues, please see http://www.unicode.org/review/#feedback

PRI #187: Second registration of sequences for the Hanyo-Denshi collection

2011-07-05T16:42:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Consortium has posted a new issue for public review and comment.

Public Review Issue #187: A submission for the "Second registration of sequences for the Hanyo-Denshi collection" has been received by the IVD registrar. This submission is currently under review according to the procedures of UTS#37, Ideographic Variation Database, with an expected close date of 2011-10-05.

Please see the submission page for details and instructions on how to review this issue and provide comments: http://www.unicode.org/ivd/pri/pri187/

For further information on Public Review Issues, please see: http://www.unicode.org/review/

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode forum or the Unicode mail list, then please use the following links to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically recorded as input. You must use the reporting link above to generate comments for consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/forum/
http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

PRI #186: Word-Joining Hyphen

2011-07-01T15:13:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/

Review period for the new item closes on July 27, 2011.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents. Briefly, the new issue is:

PRI #186 Word-Joining Hyphen

The Unicode Standard has different character properties for line-break and word-break behavior that reflect differences in behavior. The standard specifies that U+2011 NON-BREAKING HYPHEN disallows line breaks. The Unicode Technical Committee is currently considering whether this non-breaking behavior should be broadened to also affect word breaking behavior.

Details concerning this proposal are in the PRI itself:
http://www.unicode.org/review/pri186/

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode forum or the Unicode mail list, then please use the following links to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above to generate comments for UTC consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/forum/
http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

PRI #185: Revision of UBA for improved display of URL/IRIs

2011-07-01T15:10:00.001-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/

Review period for the new item closes on July 27, 2011.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents. Briefly, the new issue is:

PRI #185 Revision of UBA for improved display of URL/IRIs

The Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (UBA), specified in UAX #9, was designed for handling ordinary text, and predated the rise of the web. Unfortunately, IRI/URLs are not ordinary text; they are syntactically complex in ways that don't work well with the UBA. That causes IRIs that contain right-to-left text (such as Arabic or Hebrew) to appear jumbled, to the point where the IRIs are either uninterpretable, misleading, or ambiguous. In particular the ambiguous displays could cause security problems.

The background document for this PRI provides a detailed description of the problem, and proposes a solution. The Unicode Technical Committee would like feedback on the feasibility of the proposal, and in particular, on the open issues listed in the background document.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode forum or the Unicode mail list, then please use the following links to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above to generate comments for UTC consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/forum/
http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

PRI #184: Proposed update UTS 37 has been updated

2011-07-01T15:10:00.000-07:00

The proposed update for UTS #37 has been updated with a minor change in section 3. Please see: http://www.unicode.org/review/pri184/ and the draft for details.
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr37/tr37-6.html

Update to PRI #183: Supplementary registration of the AdobeJapan1 collection and of sequences in that collection

2011-06-24T13:05:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Consortium has posted a minor update of an issue for public review and comment.

Public Review Issue #183: A minor update of the submission for the "Supplementary registration of the AdobeJapan1 collection and of sequences in that collection" has been received by the IVD registrar. The "complete charts" file (PDF) has been revised with better organization and presentation of supplementary information. The submitted glyphs, sequence identifiers, and base characters remain unchanged. This submission is still under review according to the procedures of UTS#37, Ideographic Variation Database, with an expected close date of 2011-09-20.

Please see the submission page for details and instructions on how to review this issue and provide comments: http://www.unicode.org/ivd/pri/pri183/

For further information on Public Review Issues, please see:
http://www.unicode.org/review/

http://www.unicode.org/forum/
http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

PRI #183: Supplementary registration of the AdobeJapan1 collection and of sequences in that collection

2011-06-20T17:28:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Consortium has posted a new issue for public review and comment.

Public Review Issue #183: A submission for the "Supplementary registration of the AdobeJapan1 collection and of sequences in that collection" has been received by the IVD registrar. This submission is currently under review according to the procedures of UTS#37, Ideographic Variation Database, with an expected close date of 2011-09-20.

Please see the submission page for details and instructions on how to review this issue and provide comments: http://www.unicode.org/ivd/pri/pri183/

For further information on Public Review Issues, please see:
http://www.unicode.org/review/

http://www.unicode.org/forum/
http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

Program Announced for 35th Internationalization and Unicode Conference (IUC 35)

2011-06-06T09:20:00.000-07:00

Mountain View, CA, USA -- June 1, 2011 -- The Unicode® Consortium today announced the program for the Thirty-fifth Internationalization & Unicode® Conference (IUC 35), taking place in Santa Clara, Calif., USA; October 17-19, 2011, sponsored by Adobe. The conference is produced by OMG®. http://www.unicodeconference.org/conference-at-a-glance.htm
This is the premier conference on technologies and practices for the creation and management of global and multilingual software solutions. This annual event is praised for its excellent technical content, industry-tested recommendations and updates on the latest standards.
The program committee has created an updated program full of new and cutting-edge topics that is relevant and engaging for the internationalization community. The three-day conference will feature a full day of tutorials followed by two days of presentations and discussions. The program features cases studies, best practices, effective software design, innovative technology, and information about Unicode 6.0.
Highlights of the Conference:
Tutorials in Three Tracks:

An Introduction to Writing Systems & Unicode
Unicode - a Grand Tour
Internationalization: An Introduction
Web Internationalization - Standards and Best Practices
Internationalization Testing Best Practices
Comprehensive Arabic Script
Smart Code Set Conversions for Unicode Support in Heterogeneous Environments
Building Multilingual Websites in Drupal7 and Joomla1.6
Using ICU Workshop

Tutorial presenters come from such organizations as Amazon, IBM, Intel, DecoType, Jim DeLaHunt & Associates, W3C, XenCraft, and Yahoo! Inc.
Sessions in Three Tracks include I18N, L10N, Platforms, Arabic/Bidi, Windows, Fonts, Languages, Scripts, ICU and East Asia. Some topics that will be covered include:

Social networking is important to your business. Learn more about
Twitter and other networks' global support.
Find out about the latest in HTML5, CSS3, Java 7, ICU, and the latest font developments.
Learn about speech internationalization at Google.
Are your localization practices in need of modernization? Learn how to reduce costs and time to market with crowd sourcing, machine translation and more.

Session Presenters come from such organizations as Adobe, Aoyama Gakuin University, Beijing UniHan Digital Tech Co. Ltd., Brill, DecoType, Diwan Software, Google, Inc., Government of India, HighTech Passport, IBM, Intel, Lab126, Microsoft, SIL International, Teradata, Tiro Typeworks, Twitter, Inc., University of Michigan, and W3C.
The Internationalization & Unicode Conference is the premier technical conference for both software and Web internationalization. Unicode and internationalization experts, implementers, clients and vendors are invited to attend this unique conference. The interactive format makes the Internationalization & Unicode Conference a great place to meet and exchange ideas with leading experts, find out about the needs of potential clients, or get information about new and existing Unicode and internationalization-enabled products.
IUC 35 is sponsored by Gold Sponsor Adobe and Media Sponsor Multilingual magazine. Additional sponsorships and exhibit space are available; for more information on sponsoring contact Ken Berk at ken.berk@omg.org, +1-781-444 0404. For exhibiting questions email event_marketing@omg.org. For all other questions email info@unicodeconference.org.
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About the Unicode Consortium The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard and related globalization standards.
The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum of corporations and organizations in the computer and information processing industry. Members are: Adobe Systems, Apple, Google, Government of Bangladesh, Government of India, IBM, Microsoft, Monotype Imaging, Oracle, Rearden Commerce, SAP, The Society for Natural Language Technology Research, The University of California (Berkeley), Yahoo!, plus well over a hundred Associate, Liaison, and Individual members.
For more information, please contact the Unicode Consortium http://www.unicode.org/contacts.html.
About the Event Producer OMG® is the Event Producer for the Internationalization & Unicode Conferences. OMG is an open membership, not-for-profit consortium that produces and maintains computer industry specifications for interoperable enterprise applications. Our specifications include MDA®, UML®, CORBA®, MOF™, XMI® and CWM™. OMG's specifications are all available for download by everyone without charge.
For more information about OMG, visit us online at http://www.omg.org.

PRI #184: Proposed Update UTS #37, Unicode Ideographic Variation Database

2011-05-26T17:05:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/

Review periods for the new items close on July 25, 2011.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents. Briefly, the new issue is:

184 Proposed Update UTS #37, Unicode Ideographic Variation Database (IVD)

This update to UTS #37 will clarify how Ideographic Variation Sequences (IVSes) can be shared across IVD collections, that no IVD collection has special status, and that implementers can support any subset of the registered IVSes.

It will further amend the specification to allow duplicate sequence identifiers within an IVD collection under particular circumstances, and to allow registrants to supply multiple representative glyphs for IVSes in their IVD collections. Finally, the registration procedures will be strengthened to require registrants to supply representative glyphs for registered IVSes and to supply a data file as part of a submission.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode forum or the Unicode mail list, then please use the following links to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above to generate comments for UTC consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/forum/
http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

Unicode Releases Common Locale Data Repository, Version 2.0

2011-05-25T15:20:00.000-07:00

Mountain View, CA, May 25, 2011 - The Unicode® Consortium announced today the release of a new version of the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (Unicode CLDR 2.0), providing key building blocks for software to support the world's languages. The main features of CLDR 2.0 are improved data for top 55 languages, with an increase of over 45% in data fields. The details are found in the CLDR 2.0 Release Note (http://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-2-0).

Unicode CLDR is by far the largest and most extensive standard repository of locale data. This data is used by a wide spectrum of companies for their software internationalization and localization: adapting software to the conventions of different languages for such common software tasks as formatting of dates, times, time zones, numbers, and currency values; sorting text; choosing languages or countries by name; transliterating different alphabets; and many others. Unicode CLDR 2.0 is part of the Unicode locale data project, together with the Unicode Locale Data Markup Language (LDML: http://unicode.org/reports/tr35/). LDML is an XML format used for general interchange of locale data, such as in Microsoft's .NET.

For web pages with different views of CLDR data, see http://cldr.unicode.org/index/charts. For more information about the Unicode CLDR project (including charts) see http://cldr.unicode.org/.

Extended Public Review Issues, 177, 179, 182

2011-05-25T08:06:00.000-07:00

The review periods for three public review issues have been extended to July 25, 2011, for review at the August UTC meeting.

The affected PRIs are:

177 Proposed Update UTS #46: Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing

179 Changes to Unicode Regular Expression Guidelines

182 Proposed Update UTS #18: Unicode Regular Expressions

There is an updated version of the proposed update for UTS #18, Unicode Regular Expressions available at http://unicode.org/reports/tr18/proposed.html . The update only has editorial changes; the UTC did not have enough time to review all of the feedback on this document at its last meeting, and will be reviewing it at the August meeting.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode forum or the Unicode mail list, then please use the following links to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above to generate comments for UTC consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/forum/
http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

Unicode Consortium announces Localization Interoperability Technical Committee

2011-04-29T15:23:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Consortium announces a new technical committee, the Unicode Localization Interoperability Technical Committee. Localization of software information is a key part of the adoption of most software offerings in many countries. The purpose of the new committee is to ensure interoperable data interchange for critical localization-related assets, such as language segmentation, translation source strings, translated strings, and translation memories.

The initial focus of the Unicode Localization Interoperability (ULI) Technical Committee is on the improved interoperability of translation memories in the TMX format, segmentation rules that use the SRX format, and translation source strings and resulting translated strings that use the XLIFF format.

The ULI Technical Committee will establish profiles of use for TMX, SRX, and XLIFF. The committee will develop and publish specifications that document specific usage conventions that can be shared for interoperability. This will improve data interchange through more consistent implementations and will enhance the usefulness of these three standards.

For information on how to join the ULI effort and get involved in its work, contact the Unicode Consortium with the contact form (see http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html) and ask about the ULI.

To become a voting participant in the work of the ULI committee, join Unicode in one of the three voting categories of membership: Full, Institutional, or Supporting. See http://www.unicode.org/consortium/join.html .

For more details about the ULI, see: http://unicode.org/uli/

PRI #182: Proposed Update UTS #18, Unicode Regular Expressions

2011-04-12T17:45:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/pri181/

Review period for this item closes on May 6, 2011.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents. Briefly, the new issue is:

PRI #182: Proposed Update UTS #18

A proposed update for UTS #18, Unicode Regular Expressions has been posted by the Unicode Consortium at http://unicode.org/reports/tr18/proposed.html . Feedback on this draft is welcome, especially from regular expression engine developers and users. The main changes in this update include:

* Changes in conformance clauses for PRI #179, Changes to Unicode Regular Expression Guidelines
http://www.unicode.org/review/pri179/
* A new conformance clause for Level 2: RL2.7 Full Properties.
* Simplification of the definition of \p{blank} in Annex C Compatibility Properties.
* Clarifications of various conformance issues.

The review period for feedback closes on May 6, 2011; feedback on the document will be reviewed at the May Unicode Technical Committee meeting.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode forum or the Unicode mail list, then please use the following links to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above to generate comments for UTC consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/forum/
http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

PRI 181: Changing General Category of Twelve Characters

2011-04-01T15:20:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/pri181/

Review periods for the new items close on May 2, 2011.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents. Briefly, the new issue is:

The UTC has decided to change the general category of twelve characters, and is requesting public feedback on the proposed changes. Details of the proposal and the list of affected characters are in the background document: http://www.unicode.org/review/pri181/

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode forum or the Unicode mail list, then please use the following links to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above to generate comments for UTC consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/forum/
http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

PRI #180: Proposed addition of address form metadata to Unicode CLDR

2011-03-25T17:23:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Consortium has posted a new issue for public review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/pri180/

Review period for the new item closes on April 11, 2011.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents. Briefly, the new issue is:

Issue #180 Proposed addition of address form metadata to Unicode CLDR

The Unicode Consortium is considering the addition to CLDR of address form metadata. This metadata is intended for presenting a form for users to fill in with address data. The format and data is being donated by Google. The consortium is soliciting feedback on these changes. Feedback should be submitted as comments to http://unicode.org/cldr/trac/ticket/3572.

The detailed proposal and background information can be found at this link: http://www.unicode.org/review/pri180/

If you have comments for official consideration, please follow the instructions and the link in the text of the PRI.

Unicode Releases Common Locale Data Repository, Version 1.9.1

2011-03-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

The Unicode CLDR 1.9.1 maintenance release is now available. See http://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-1-9-1 for details.

The next major release is CLDR 2.0, scheduled for late May. The CLDR 2.0 release does involve general data submission, which is currently in progress. For the lastest schedule, see http://cldr.unicode.org .

Public Review Issue #179: Change to Unicode Regular Expression Guidelines

2011-03-02T15:07:00.000-08:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/pri179/

Review periods for the new items close on May 2, 2011.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents. Briefly, the new issue is:

PRI #179: Changes to Unicode Regular Expression Guidelines

The Unicode Consortium is considering changes to UTS #18 Unicode Regular Expressions (http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr18/). These proposed changes have arisen in connection with questions about case-insensitive and canonical-equivalent matching.

The proposed changes eliminate some requirements on implementations of Unicode Regular Expressions which have proven to be problematic in implementations, and add clarifications. The consortium is soliciting feedback on these changes.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode mail list, then please use the following link to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above to generate comments for UTC consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

Unicode Version 6.0 - Complete Text of Core Specification Published

2011-02-18T11:34:00.000-08:00

Mountain View, CA, February 17, 2011 - The Unicode® Consortium is pleased to announce the publication of the final text of the core specification for Unicode 6.0. The Unicode 6.0 core specification includes information on scripts newly encoded in Unicode 6.0, as well as many updates and clarifications to other sections of the text. The release of the core specification completes the definitive documentation of the Unicode Standard, Version 6.0

In Version 6.0, the standard grew by 2,088 characters. Over 1,000 of these characters are symbols used for text exchange on mobile phones. The Unicode Standard now also includes the recently created official symbol for the Indian rupee. After computers and mobile phones update to Version 6.0, the rupee sign will be available for use like the $ or € now.

In addition, this version adds many CJK Unified Ideographs in common use in China, Taiwan, and Japan,as well as characters for African language support, including extensions to the Tifinagh, Ethiopic,and Bamum scripts. Three scripts are supported for the first time: Mandaic, Batak, and Brahmi.

In October of 2010, the other portions of Unicode 6.0 were released: the Unicode Standard Annexes, code charts, and the Unicode Character Database. This allowed vendors to update their implementations of Unicode 6.0 as quickly as possible.

For more information on all of The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0, see http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode6.0.0/

Call for Participation: 35th Internationalization and Unicode Conference

2011-02-08T14:37:00.000-08:00

Mountain View, CA, USA – February 8, 2011 – The Unicode® Consortium today announced a call for participation in the Thirty-fifth Internationalization & Unicode® Conference (IUC 35), taking place in Santa Clara, Calif., USA; October 17-19, 2011, sponsored by Adobe. The conference is produced by OMG®.

This is the premier conference on technologies and practices for the creation and management of global and multilingual software solutions. This annual event is praised for its excellent technical content, industry-tested recommendations and updates on the latest standards.

The Program Committee is soliciting proposals for presentations that describe cases studies, best practices, effective software design, innovative technology, or important standards. Tutorial presentations are also welcome. Suitable topics include, but are not limited to:

Application Areas

• Designing software platforms, operating systems, software as a service, (SAAS), or programming environments
• Social networks
• Search engines, SEO, discovery and navigation best practices
• Websites and web services
• Libraries and education
• Mobile applications, including iPhone, Android, iPad, Kindle, Windows Mobile, etc.
• Publishing and broadcasting for a global audience
• Internationalized Domain Names and other identifiers
• Security concerns and practices
• Semantic Web
• Voice to text, text to voice
• Machine translation
• Unicode, encodings, scripts, character properties, and algorithms

General Techniques

• Advances in technologies, algorithms or methodologies
• Using internationalization libraries and programming environments
• Handling bidirectional or other complex scripts
• Dealing with data formats: XML, JSON, HTML5, DITA, and upcoming standards
• Project management and methodologies for global development teams e.g. Agile
• Best practices in localization process and technology
• Best practices in world-ready development, test, and deployment
• Improving globalization capabilities within organizations
• Approaches for migrating legacy applications to global markets
• Font development and Typography

Culture and Technology

• Endangered Languages
• Unencoded Languages
• Case studies and research on cross-culture communication
• Digital Divide

Regional Considerations

• Languages of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East
• Locales and the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR)
• Emoji support

Details of the call for participation are available at: http://www.unicodeconference.org/iuc35call . Interested individuals or organizations are invited to submit a brief (up to 600 word) abstract of their proposed conference presentation by Friday, March 25 using this web form: http://www.unicodeconference.org/abstracts .

The Program Committee will notify authors by Wednesday, April 20. Final presentation materials will be required from selected presenters by Wednesday, August 3. The conference agenda will be available by Wednesday, May 4 at: http://www.unicodeconference.org/ .

Sponsorships and exhibit space are available; for more information on sponsoring contact Ken Berk at ken.berk@omg.org, +1-781-444 0404. For exhibiting questions email event_marketing@omg.org. For all other questions email info@unicodeconference.org .

For more information, please contact the Unicode Consortium
http://www.unicode.org/contacts.html .

About the Event Producer

OMG® is the Event Producer for the Internationalization & Unicode Conferences. OMG is an open membership, not-for-profit consortium that produces and maintains computer industry specifications for interoperable enterprise applications. Our specifications include MDA®, UML®, CORBA®, MOF™, XMI® and CWM™. OMG’s specifications are all available for download by everyone without charge.

For more information about OMG, visit us online at http://www.omg.org .

Note to editors: Unicode Standard, Unicode and the Unicode Logo are trademarks of Unicode, Inc. Unicode Consortium is a registered trademark of Unicode, Inc. OMG and Object Management Group are trademarks of Object Management Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Opening of Data Submission for CLDR 2.0

2011-02-08T13:43:00.000-08:00

The Unicode Consortium is announcing the opening of data submission for the 2.0 release of Unicode CLDR, the Common Locale Data Repository. Data for the CLDR project is collected via the CLDR survey tool.

The CLDR survey tool is at http://unicode.org/cldr/apps/survey

The data submission is currently scheduled to run from now until March 9, 2011, after which the data will go into vetting mode in order to resolve any conflicts that may occur in the data.

If you plan to submit data for the 2.0 release of CLDR you will need a login ID and password associated with your e-mail address.

1. If you have used ST in a previous release of CLDR, your login ID and password are still active.

2. If you need to set up a new account, please see the instructions at http://cldr.unicode.org/index/survey-tool/accounts

A summary of the new features in 2.0 release of CLDR survey tool is at http://cldr.unicode.org/index/survey-tool/survey-tool-2-0-new-features

Unicode CLDR announces Survey Tool 2.0 BETA

2011-02-03T15:01:00.000-08:00

The Unicode Consortium is announcing the beta test release of the survey tool for data submission for the 2.0 release of Unicode CLDR, the Common Locale Data Repository.

The CLDR survey tool is at http://unicode.org/cldr/apps/survey

The beta test period allows users to get comfortable with and provide feedback on the user interface before attempting to input real data. Any data entered during the BETA period will be discarded. The CLDR committee plans to switch over to production mode on Monday February 7, 2011, unless we find some critical error during beta period that would prevent that.

If you plan to submit data for the 2.0 release of CLDR you will need a login ID and password associated with your e-mail address.

1. If you have used ST in a previous release of CLDR, your login ID and password are still active.

2. If you need to set up a new account, please see the instructions at http://cldr.unicode.org/index/survey-tool/accounts

A summary of the new features in 2.0 release of CLDR survey tool is at http://cldr.unicode.org/index/survey-tool/survey-tool-2-0-new-features

Public Review Issue #178: Collation Rules for Non-Latin Scripts in Unicode CLDR

2011-02-03T14:59:00.000-08:00

The Unicode CLDR Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/pri178/

Review period for the new item closes on February 28, 2011.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents. Briefly, the new issue is:

PRI #178 Collation Rules for Non-Latin Scripts in Unicode CLDR

In Unicode CLDR 1.9 and earlier versions, the collation order for given languages changes the order of characters within a script, but doesn't change the order of scripts. In Unicode CLDR 2.0 and later versions, there is the capability to customize the collation order by re-ordering one or more scripts with respect to other scripts. The proposal addressed by this Public Review Issue is to change the customized collation order for certain languages in the Unicode CLDR data tables.

If you have comments for official consideration, please post them by submitting your comments through the Unicode CLDR reporting form:

http://unicode.org/cldr/trac/newticket

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode CLDR mail list, then please use the following link to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware that discussion comments on the mail list are not automatically recorded as input to the technical committee. You must use the reporting link above to generate comments for consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

Save the Date: 35th Internationalization and Unicode Conference: Santa Clara, CA, USA - 10/17-19, 2011

2011-01-25T17:22:00.000-08:00

Mountain View, CA, USA - January 25, 2011 - The Unicode® Consortium today announced that the Thirty-fifth Internationalization and Unicode Conference (IUC) will take place in Santa Clara, Calif., USA at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on October 17-19, 2011, sponsored by Adobe. This is the premier conference on technologies and practices for the creation and management of global and multilingual software applications.

This annual event focuses on software and Web globalization. It brings together internationalization experts, tools vendors, software implementers, and business and program managers from around the world. Expert practitioners and industry leaders present detailed recommendations for businesses looking to expand to new international markets and those seeking to improve time to market and cost-efficiency of supporting existing markets. Recent conferences have provided specific advice on designing software for European countries, Latin America, China, India, Japan, Korea, the Middle East, and emerging markets.

This highly rated conference features excellent technical content, industry-tested recommendations and updates on the latest standards and technology. Subject areas include cloud, upgrading to HTML5, integrating with social networking software, and implementing mobile apps. This year's conference will also highlight new features in Unicode Version 6 and other relevant standards published this year.

The Call for Participation will be issued shortly. The abstract submission deadline will be March 25, 2011. For more information about IUC 35, please visit http://www.unicodeconference.org/save-the-date.

About the Event Producer

OMG® is the Event Producer for the Internationalization & Unicode Conferences. OMG is an open membership, not-for-profit consortium that produces and maintains computer industry specifications for interoperable enterprise applications. Our specifications include MDA®, UML®, CORBA®, MOF(tm), XMI® and CWM(tm). OMG's specifications are all available for download by everyone without charge.

For more information about OMG, visit us online at http://www.omg.org.

Corrected mapping data for Unihan_Variants.txt now available

2011-01-18T17:32:00.000-08:00

The Unicode Consortium announces the availability of corrected mapping data for Unihan_Variants.txt. Due to a production problem, many of the traditional and simplified CJK mappings posted in Unihan_Variants.txt as part of the Unihan Database (Unihan.zip) for Unicode 6.0 have corrupted values in them. A corrected version of this mapping data has been posted at: http://www.unicode.org/Public/6.1.0/ucd/Unihan_Variants-6.1.0d1.txt

It is anticipated these corrected mappings will be incorporated in the next version of the Unicode Standard. In the interim, applications which make use of the traditional and simplified CJK mappings in the Unihan Database may wish to correct their mappings based on the revised data file. The traditional and simplified CJK mappings are classified as provisional properties in the Unicode Character Database. Users of provisional properties are cautioned that their use is at the implementer's risk.

Unicode Discussion Forum

2011-01-12T08:04:00.000-08:00

The Unicode Forum provides a new, more open means for the community of Unicode users and experts to ask questions and discuss topics. For Unicode users, the forum provides an indexed, categorized and easily searchable means of accessing information about the Unicode Standards, related specifications and their use. For experts, the forum provides a place to discuss the desirability and ramification of proposed future extensions to the standard, as well as a place to discuss the state of the art in implementing various features.

To view the forum and participate in discussions, please direct your browser to this URL: http://www.unicode.org/forum/ . Registration is free. As a registered user, you can set up RSS feeds from the forum or subscribe to e-mail notification for topics of interest.

Proposed Update UTS #46, Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing, Version 6.0.1

2010-12-29T22:36:00.000-08:00

The Unicode Consortium has released a proposed update for UTS #46, Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing, Version 6.0.1. This update is intended to make it easier for implementations to both support IDNA2008, and use the mappings in UTS #46. Those mappings allow implementations to meet user expectations for handling uppercase and lowercase, and other character variants, and maintain compatibility with IDNA2003. The proposed data is found in: http://www.unicode.org/Public/idna/6.0.1/

The proposed draft does not change the UTS #46 status or mapping data for Unicode 6.0 characters; instead, it adds new informative fields to the data file and the conformance test file, fields that provide information as to which characters are allowed under IDNA2008. Because UTS #46 is targeted at client software such as browsers, the conformance tests do not check for the CONTEXTO conditions of IDNA2008, which are optional for client software.

Feedback on the proposed draft is welcome. Of particular interest are independent mechanical verification of the new field values, and feedback as to whether it would be useful to add checks for the CONTEXTO conditions to the conformance tests.

Details of the Public Review Issue are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/

Review periods for the new items close on January 31, 2011.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

Galley proofs for chapters 1-7 of the Unicode 6.0 Core Specification now online

2010-12-20T16:11:00.000-08:00

Pre-publication versions of Chapters 1-7 of the Unicode Core Specification, Version 6.0, are now available for online viewing at http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode6.0.0/ . These pre-publication chapters are in the final copy editing stage and may have minor edits before the final version is published. The final version of the entire core specification will be published in February 2011.

Unicode Releases Common Locale Data Repository, Version 1.9

2010-12-02T12:20:00.000-08:00

Mountain View, CA, December 1, 2010 - The Unicode® Consortium announced today the release of a new version of the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (Unicode CLDR 1.9), providing key building blocks for software to support the world's languages. The main features of CLDR 1.9 are enhanced collation and transliteration support, new structure, and modifications for data consistency. The details are found in the CLDR 1.9 Release Note (http://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-1-9).

Unicode CLDR is by far the largest and most extensive standard repository of locale data. This data is used by a wide spectrum of companies for their software internationalization and localization: adapting software to the conventions of different languages for such common software tasks as formatting of dates, times, time zones, numbers, and currency values; sorting text; choosing languages or countries by name; transliterating different alphabets; and many others. Unicode CLDR 1.9 is part of the Unicode locale data project, together with the Unicode Locale Data Markup Language (LDML: http://unicode.org/reports/tr35/). LDML is an XML format used for general interchange of locale data, such as in Microsoft's .NET.

For web pages with different views of CLDR data, see http://unicode.org/cldr/charts.html. For more information about the Unicode CLDR project (including charts) see http://cldr.unicode.org .

New version of Unicode Ideographic Variation Database released

2010-11-20T09:27:00.000-08:00

The Unicode Consortium is pleased to announce the release of version 2010-11-14 of the Unicode Ideographic Variation Database. This release adds a new collection, Hanyo-Denshi, with 4,195 sequences in that collection. Details can be found at <http://www.unicode.org/ivd/> and <http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/domestic/sc02/hanyo-denshi/20100331>.

Corrigendum #8 issued for U+070F SYRIAC ABBREVIATION MARK

2010-11-19T17:58:00.000-08:00

Corrigendum #8 has been issued, to correct the Bidi_Class for U+070F SYRIAC ABBREVIATION MARK. This corrigendum corrects the Bidi_Class to the value which was intended for Unicode 6.0, so that U+070F will not be separated into distinct directional runs from the other Syriac characters it is used with.

As for other corrigenda, this correction to the Bidi_Class value for U+070F does not modify the content of Unicode 6.0. However, it makes it possible for applications to declare conformance to Unicode 6.0 plus Corrigendum #8, if needed.

For details please see: http://www.unicode.org/versions/corrigendum8.html http://www.unicode.org/standard/versions/components-6.0.0.html#Unicode_6_0_0_With_Corrigendum

Unicode 6.0 Sorting

2010-10-30T11:34:00.000-07:00

Mountain View, CA, USA – October 29, 2010 – The new version of Unicode Technical Standard #10, Unicode Collation Algorithm (UCA), has been updated for Unicode Version 6.0, adding support for 2,088 characters in sorting, searching, and matching. Also in this release new data files for support of the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR), which provides customization for different languages.

Reorderable Categories. The data files for CLDR order characters strictly by certain major categories. This allows programmers to parametrically reorder these groups of characters to put them in the desired order for different languages. For example, numbers can be ordered after letters, or Cyrillic before Latin. The reorderable categories are:

whitespace, punctuation, general symbols, currency symbols, and numbers, then Latin, Greek, Coptic, Cyrillic, ..., Egyptian Hieroglyphs, and finally, CJK.

Distinguishing Symbols from Punctuation. UCA provides an option for ignoring certain characters when comparing strings. By default, these are whitespace, punctuation, and general symbols. The data files for CLDR modify that default so that symbols are compared significantly, while still ignoring whitespace and punctuation. Thus, for example, "I♥NY" is not sorted the same as "I☠NY".

Special Database Values. The data files for CLDR provide special weights for two noncharacters:

1. A special noncharacter <HIGH> (U+FFFF) for specification of a range in a database, allowing "Sch" ≤ X ≤ "Sch<HIGH>" to pick all strings starting with "sch" plus those that sort equivalently.

2. A special noncharacter <LOW> (U+FFFE) for merged database fields, allowing "Disílva<LOW>John" to sort next to "Disilva<LOW>John".

The version of CLDR using these new data files is planned for release at the start of December, 2010.

The text of the UCA standard has been clarified in different areas. Implementers should pay special attention to the changes regarding ill-formed sequences, noncharacters, and unassigned code points in CJK blocks.

For more information, see:

* The UCA Standard 6.0.0: http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr10/
* The UCA charts: http://unicode.org/charts/collation/
* The UCA data: http://unicode.org/Public/UCA/6.0.0/
* Merged database fields: http://unicode.org/reports/tr10/#Interleaved_Levels

About The Unicode Consortium

Members are: Adobe, Apple, Google, Government of Bangladesh, Government of India, IBM, Microsoft, Monotype Imaging, Oracle, The Society for Natural Language Technology Research, SAP, The University of California (Berkeley), The University of California (Santa Cruz), Yahoo!, plus well over a hundred Associate, Liaison, and Individual members.

For more information, please contact the Unicode Consortium. http://www.unicode.org/contacts.html

Unicode 6.0 Internationalized Domain Names

2010-10-30T11:33:00.000-07:00

Mountain View, CA, USA – October 29, 2010 – The new version of Unicode Technical Standard #46, Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing, has been updated for Unicode Version 6.0, adding support for 2,088 characters in internationalized domain names (IDN).

The specification provides two main features for use with the new specification for internationalized domain names released in August 2010 (IDNA2008):

1. A comprehensive mapping to reflect user expectations for casing and other variants of domain names. This mapping is allowed by IDNA2008, and follows the same principles as in the previous version of that specification (IDNA2003, in force from 2003 until August). It thus provides users consistency between old and new versions.

2. A compatibility mechanism that supports internationalized domain names valid under the IDNA2003 specification and the IDNA2008 specification. This second feature allows browsers, search engines, and other clients to handle both old and new domain names during the transitional period until registries update their rules to follow IDNA2008.

UTS #46 supplies normative data tables that are synchonized with the latest version of Unicode, allowing implementations to update without recalculation.

This new release of UTS #46 also provides a custom option to recognize legacy international domain names containing special ASCII characters such as "_".

About The Unicode Consortium

For more information, please contact the Unicode Consortium. http://www.unicode.org/contacts.html

Unicode Version 6.0: Support for Popular Symbols in Asia

2010-10-12T16:39:00.000-07:00

The newly finalized Unicode Version 6.0 adds 2,088 characters, with over 1,000 new symbols.

A long-awaited feature of Unicode 6.0 is the encoding of hundreds of symbols for mobile phones. These emoji characters are in widespread use, especially in Japan, and have become an essential part of text messages there and elsewhere. Unicode 6.0 now provides for data interchange between different mobile vendors and across the internet. The symbols include symbols for many domains: maps and transport, phases of the moon, UI symbols (such as fast-forward) and many others.

A late-breaking addition is the newly created official symbol for the Indian rupee. With the help of the Indian government and our colleagues in ISO, the consortium was able to accelerate the encoding process. Once computers and mobile phones update to the new version of Unicode, people will be able to use the rupee sign like they use $ or € now.

This October 2010 release includes the Unicode Character Database (UCD), Unicode Standard Annexes (UAXes), and code charts. With the release of these components, implementers are able update their software to Unicode 6.0 without delay. The final text of the core specification will be available in early 2011.

To access Unicode 6.0, see http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode6.0.0.

For more information on emoji, see http://unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html

For a formatted version of this message with images, see http://unicode.org/press/pr-6.0.html.

Public Review Issue #172: Proposed Update Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing

2010-08-31T15:06:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/

Review period for the new item closes on September 9, 2010.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents. Briefly, the new issue is:

#172 Proposed Update UTS #46, Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing

http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr46/proposed.html

There is a proposed update with the following features: alignment with Unicode 6.0, the addition of conformance test files, and support of the IDNA2003 option UseSTD3ASCIIRules=false.

Feedback is requested both on both the draft text http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr46/proposed.html and draft data files http://unicode.org/Public/idna/6.0.0/

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

Public Review Issue #176: Properties of Two Khmer Characters

2010-08-24T16:51:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public review and comment. Details are on the following web page:http://www.unicode.org/review/.

Review periods for the new items close on October 25, 2010.
Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents. Briefly, the new issue is:

PRI #176: Properties of Two Khmer Characters

The UTC is considering potential changes to the General_Category property values and default collation weighting of two Khmer characters, U+17B4 KHMER VOWEL INHERENT AQ and U+17B5 KHMER VOWEL INHERENT AA. The UTC is seeking feedback on this topic. In particular, the UTC would be interested in learning of any current implementations which might be adversely affected by any of the proposed modifications to the General_Category and/or default collation weighting of these two characters. Please see the background document http://www.unicode.org/review/pr-176.html for details on the proposal.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page: http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html.

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode mail list, then please use the following link to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above to generate comments for UTC consideration. http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html.

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All of the Unicode Consortium lists are strictly opt-in lists for members or interested users of our standards. We make every effort to remove users who do not wish to receive e-mail from us. To see why you are getting this mail and how to remove yourself from our lists if you want, please see http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html#announcements.

Public Review Issue #175: CLDR 1.9 Collation Changes

2010-08-24T15:17:00.000-07:00

The Unicode CLDR committee is making Unicode locale-sensitive collation a major focus for the next release, CLDR 1.9. There are specific changes for a large number of languages, plus a change in the default ordering of punctuation vs symbols for all languages.

Please see the background document for more information: http://www.unicode.org/review/pr-175.html

If you have any feedback on any of the actions, please file a ticket with CLDR as described in the background document.

Review period for this issue closes on October 1, 2010.

If you wish to discuss issues on the CLDR Users mail list, then please use the following link to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware that discussion comments on the mail list are not automatically recorded as input to the committee. You must use the submission mechanism described in the background document to generate comments for consideration. http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

----
All of the Unicode Consortium lists are strictly opt-in lists for members or interested users of our standards. We make every effort to remove users who do not wish to receive e-mail from us. To see why you are getting this mail and how to remove yourself from our lists if you want, please see http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html#announcements

Unicode Security and Domain Names

2010-08-06T12:30:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Consortium has released three important specifications related to Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) and Security.

UTS #46: Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr46/

UTR# 36: Unicode Security Considerations
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr36/

UTR# 39: Unicode Security Mechanisms
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr39/

UTS #46: Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing

Client software, such as browsers and emailers, faces a difficult transition from the version of international domain names approved in 2003 (IDNA2003), to the revision approved in 2010 (IDNA2008). The specification in this document provides a mechanism that minimizes the impact of this transition for client software, allowing client software to access domains that are valid under either system. The specification provides two main features: One is a comprehensive mapping to support current user expectations for casing and other variants of domain names.
Such a mapping is allowed by IDNA2008. The second is a compatibility mechanism that supports the existing domain names that were allowed under IDNA2003. This second feature is intended to improve client behavior during the transitional period.

UTR# 36: Unicode Security Considerations

Because Unicode contains such a large number of characters and incorporates the varied writing systems of the world, incorrect usage can expose programs or systems to possible security attacks. This is especially important as more and more products are internationalized.

This document describes some of the security considerations that programmers, system analysts, standards developers, and users should take into account, and provides specific recommendations to reduce the risk of problems.

UTR# 39: Unicode Security Mechanisms

Because Unicode contains such a large number of characters and incorporates the varied writing systems of the world, incorrect usage can expose programs or systems to possible security attacks. This document specifies mechanisms that can be used to detect possible security problems.

New PRI: Proposed Draft UTR #49 Unicode Character Categories

2010-08-02T15:06:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public review and comment. Details are on the following web page: http://www.unicode.org/review/ Review periods for the new items close on October 25, 2010. Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents.

Briefly, the new issue is:
PRI #174 Proposed Draft UTR #49, "Unicode Character Categories"
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr49/tr49-1.html
This proposed draft UTR presents an approach to the categorization of Unicode characters, and documents a data file that implementers can use for defining Unicode character categories.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page: http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode mail list, then please use the following link to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above to generate comments for UTC consideration. http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

Submit nominations for the Unicode Bulldog Award

2010-07-21T15:02:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Consortium sponsors an annual award for outstanding personal contributions to the philosophy and dissemination of the Unicode Standard. Known as the “Bulldog Award,” it is presented at the Unicode conference to recognize “those tenacious champions of Unicode who have produced solid achievements in promoting its use around the globe”.

The Consortium invites the Unicode community to nominate up to two people they believe are most deserving of this award. Nominations should include a brief rationale why the candidate would be a good choice. Please check http://unicode.org/conference/bulldog.html to see a list of past winners. Executive officers and staff of the Unicode Consortium are not eligible for the award. Send nominations to magda@unicode.org with “Bulldog Award nomination” in the subject line by August 22, 2010.

Unicode Locale Identifier Stability

2010-07-20T17:43:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Locale stability policies have been extended to cover
Unicode locale identifiers more clearly. See
http://unicode.org/policies/locales_stability.html

Unicode 5.0 now in Chinese

2010-07-13T14:02:00.000-07:00

Pearson Education Asia Ltd. and Tsinghua University Press just published a translation of the Unicode Standard 5.0 in Simplified Chinese, available at Amazon.cn: http://www.amazon.cn/gp/product/B00328IJ46?ver=gp

New ways to follow Unicode

2010-07-12T14:16:00.000-07:00

Follow us now on Facebook and Twitter, or read our blog. New icons below the menu on our home page give convenient links to these sites.
http://www.unicode.org/
What's new?
1. The Unicode Blog: http://unicode-inc.blogspot.com/
Our blog automatically receives the same announcements sent to our official e-mail list making it another convenient way to follow what's new. The blog is also available as an RSS or Atom newsfeed, so you can get the blog posts directly in your reader or e-mail client.
2. Twitter: http://twitter.com/unicode/
We are tweeting announcements as well as other interesting information for the Unicode community.
3. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Friends-of-Unicode/127785250588285
If you like Unicode and use Facebook, please consider becoming a Friend of Unicode.

Unicode welcomes Government of Bangladesh

2010-07-02T13:01:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Consortium is pleased to welcome the Government of
Bangladesh as a new instutitional member. Their website is at:
http://www.mosict.gov.bd/

New Public Review Issue #173: Invariant Tests

2010-06-24T11:53:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public
review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/#pri173

Review periods for the new items close on August 2, 2010.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents.
Briefly, the new issue is:

Issue #173 Invariant Tests
This PRI proposes to add to the UCD a new machine-readable file that is
used to test invariants for each release of Unicode. The data documents
what is tested prior to the release of a version of the UCD. UAX #44
would be augmented with a short section documenting the structure and
usage. Details are in the PRI itself and the associated background
documents.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by
submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode mail list, then please
use the following link to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware
that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically
recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above
to generate comments for UTC consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

New Public Review Issues (UTS #46 data, and two others)

2010-06-09T11:24:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted three new issues for public review and comment. Details are on the following web page:http://www.unicode.org/review/ Review periods for the new items close on August 2, 2010. Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents. Briefly, the new issues are:

169 Glyph Variation of Double Oblique Hyphen
171 Proposal to change properties of U+06DE ARABIC START OF RUB EL HIZB
172 Proposed Update UTS #46: Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing

The data for UTS #46 is being updated to synchronize with Unicode 6.0, and the UTC would like to get feedback on the data tables. Please see the text of the PRI for details.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page: http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode mail list, then please use the following link to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above to generate comments for UTC consideration. http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

Unicode 6.0 Beta, including new support for mobile phones

2010-06-02T16:26:00.000-07:00

Mountain View, CA, USA – June 2, 2010 – The Unicode® Consortium today announced the availability of the Unicode 6.0 beta. A smooth transition to each new version of the Unicode Standard is vital, because it is the foundation for all modern software and communications around the world, including all modern operating systems, browsers, and smartphones; modern web protocols (HTML, XML,...); and internationalized domain names.

Software developers and other experts are strongly encouraged to review the beta data files and documentation for Unicode 6.0 carefully, and to provide any feedback regarding errors or other issues to the Unicode Consortium. Software developers can also get an early start in testing their programs with the beta data files so they they will be ready for the release of Unicode 6.0 at the end of September.

A long-awaited new feature of Unicode 6.0 is the support of new characters for mobile phones. The emoji (pictographic) characters are in very widespread use, especially in Japan. They have distinct semantics, and are often substituted for related words. For the first time, there is a standard encoding for these characters that allows lossless interchange between different vendors. Unicode 6.0 also adds 222 new CJK unified ideographs in common use in China and Japan, and a number of other symbols and letters used by other languages.

See http://unicode.org/versions/Unicode6.0.0/ for the current draft summary.
See http://unicode.org/versions/beta.html for more information about the beta.

About the Unicode Consortium

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard and related globalization standards. The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum of corporations and organizations in the computer and information processing industry. Members are: Adobe Systems, Apple, DENIC eG, Google, Government of India, Government of West Bengal, IBM, Microsoft, Monotype Imaging, Oracle, SAP, Sybase, The University of California (Berkeley), The University of California (Santa Cruz), Yahoo!, plus well over a hundred Associate, Liaison, and Individual members.

For more information, please contact the Unicode Consortium.

[Unicode Announcement] Unicode Releases Common Locale Data Repository, Version 1.8.1

2010-04-29T20:58:00.000-07:00

The Unicode CLDR 1.8.1 maintenance release is now available. See
http://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-1-8-1 for details.

The next major release is CLDR 1.9, scheduled for the end of October.
Two milestone releases are planned for 1.9 as well. The 1.9 release is
focused on tooling and structural changes, while the CLDR 2.0 release
will involve general data submission. For the tentative schedule, see
http://cldr.unicode.org.

[Unicode Announcement] Call for Participation: IUC 34, Oct 18-20, 2010

2010-04-27T11:46:00.000-07:00

Mountain View, CA, USA – April 26, 2010 – The Unicode® Consortium today
announced a call for participation in The Thirty-fourth
Internationalization & Unicode® Conference (IUC 34), taking place in
Santa Clara, Calif., USA; October 18-20, 2010. The conference is
produced by OMG™.

The Internationalization & Unicode Conference is the premier annual
technical conference for topics on the design and global deployment of
multilingual applications and web sites. Internationalization and
Unicode experts, implementers, clients, teachers, students, and vendors
are invited to attend this unique conference. The interactive format
makes the Internationalization & Unicode Conference a great place to
meet and exchange ideas with leading experts, find out about the needs
of potential clients, and get information about Unicode-enabled products.

To be considered as a presenter for the conference, please submit a
brief abstract before Wednesday, May 26. Topics should be related to
internationalization and localization; presentations structured as
tutorials are also welcome. Suitable topics include, but are not limited
to:

Best Practices and New Approaches

• New technologies, algorithms and methodologies
• Using internationalization libraries and programming environments
• Handling bidirectional or other complex scripts
• Data formats and evolving standards, e.g. XML, JSON, HTML5, DITA,
• Project management for global development teams
• Localization technologies, Crowd Sourcing, Machine Translation, et al
• Development, test, and deployment techniques and experiences
• Improving globalization capabilities within organizations
• Migrating legacy applications to global markets
• Unicode, Emoji, and character encodings

Application Areas

• Social networks
• Search engines, SEO, discovery and navigation best practices
• Websites, Cloud Computing, SAAS, and Web services
• Libraries and education
• Mobile applications, including iPhone, Android, iPad, Kindle, etc.
• Publishing and broadcasting for a global audience
• Internationalized Domain Names and other identifiers
• Security concerns and practices

Language and Locale Support

• African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and support for other languages
• Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR)
• Font development

Details of the call for participation are available at:
http://www.unicodeconference.org/iuc34call

Interested individuals or organizations are invited to submit a brief
(up to 600 word) abstract of their proposed conference presentation by
Wednesday, May 26 using this web form:
http://www.unicodeconference.org/abstracts

The Program Committee will notify authors by Wednesday, June 9. Final
presentation materials will be required from selected presenters by
Tuesday August 31. The conference agenda will be available by Tuesday,
June 15 at: http://www.unicodeconference.org/

Sponsorships and exhibit space are available; for more information on
sponsoring contact Ken Berk at kenberk@omg.org, +1-781-444 0404. For
exhibiting questions email event_marketing@omg.org . For all other
questions email: info@unicodeconference.org

###

About the Unicode Consortium

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop,
extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard and related globalization
standards.

The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum of
corporations and organizations in the computer and information
processing industry. Members are: Adobe Systems, Apple, DENIC eG,
Google, Government of India, Government of Tamil Nadu, IBM, Microsoft,
Monotype Imaging, Oracle, The Society for Natural Language Technology
Research, SAP, Sybase, The University of California (Berkeley), The
University of California (Santa Cruz), Yahoo!, plus well over a hundred
Associate, Liaison, and Individual members.

For more information, please contact the Unicode Consortium
http://www.unicode.org/contacts.html. For more information, please
contact the Unicode Consortium http://www.unicode.org.

About the Event Producer

OMG™ is the Event Producer for the Internationalization & Unicode
Conferences. OMG is an open membership, not-for-profit consortium that
produces and maintains computer industry specifications for
interoperable enterprise applications. Our specifications include MDA®,
UML®, CORBA®, MOF™, XMI® and CWM™. OMG's specifications are all
available for download by everyone without charge.

For more information about OMG, visit us online at http://www.omg.org.

Note to editors: Unicode Standard, Unicode and the Unicode Logo are
trademarks of Unicode, Inc. Unicode Consortium is a registered trademark
of Unicode, Inc. OMG and Object Management Group are trademarks of
Object Management Group. All other trademarks are the property of their
respective owners.

[Unicode Announcement] New Public Review Issue: Two New Provisional Properties for Characters in Indic Scripts

2010-04-15T13:06:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public review
and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/

Review periods for the new items close on May 3, 2010.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents.
Briefly, the new issue is:

Issue #168: Two New Provisional Properties for Characters in Indic Scripts
http://www.unicode.org/review/#pri168

The UTC is considering the addition of two new, enumerated provisional
character properties for Indic scripts: Indic_Syllabic_Category and
Matra_Placement. These are to assist in the analysis and processing of
syllables for various Brahmi-derived scripts, providing classificatory
information that is not easy to extract or derive for all of the Indic
scripts in the standard. Feedback is welcome on the construction of the
proposed properties, the details of the proposed assignment of values
for characters, and on the question of the usefulness of defining such
properties.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by
submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode mail list, then please
use the following link to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware
that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically
recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above
to generate comments for UTC consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

[Unicode Announcement] Tracking proposed updates to Unicode technical publications

2010-04-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

To make it easier to find and track proposed updates to Unicode
technical publications, the editorial committee has made several
improvements:

* Proposed updates can be found by a predictable, stable URL
* This URL is always accessible from the latest approved version of
the document via a header field titled "Latest Proposed Update".

For example, if you look at the approved 5.2.0 version of UAX
#15, Unicode Normalization Forms
(http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr15/), you'll find at the top
of the document under "Latest Proposed Update" a link to
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr15/proposed.html. That URL
points to the latest proposed update for UAX #15.

* If there is currently no proposed update for a document, the URL
will point to a stub document indicating that there is no current
proposed update.

In addition, a predictable, stable URL is used for the modifications
section within each proposed update. That section summarizes the changes
that have been made from the previous version. These URLs follow the
format http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr15/proposed.html#Modifications .

[Unicode Announcement] W3C India Conference

2010-04-08T11:39:00.000-07:00

Here is an announcement for a conference in India which should be of interest to Unicode members.

---------------

The W3C India Office is organizing an International Conference "World Wide Web: Technology, Standards and Internationalization - 2010" in New Delhi on May 6-7, 2010.

The focus of the conference is to promote and proliferate W3C Standards in India to enable seamless Web access in Indian languages. One of the major aspects to be covered in the conference is Internationalization, especially in light of the complexity of implementing Indian Languages.

Core Technology Tracks in the Conference include:

1. W3C and Web Technologies
2. Internationalization Aspects in W3C
3. Web Access through mobile and hand-held devices
4. CSS and Styling issues
5. Web Architecture and Semantic web
6. Human Machine Interface for the Web
7. Web Content Accessibility in Indian Languages
8. W3C and E-Governance

Kindly visit the W3C India Website http://www.w3cindia.in and the Conference Website http://www.w3cindia.in/conf-site/conference-index.htm for more details. The Conference will also attempt to evolve a Roadmap for proliferation and specific requirements for Indian Languages in W3C and associated standards. We look forward to your active cooperation and participation in the Conference.

[Unicode Announcement] Public Review Issue: IVD Submission, PRI #167

2010-03-30T16:02:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Consortium has posted a new issue for public review and
comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/

Review periods for the new items close on June 26, 2010.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents.
Briefly, the new issue is:

PRI #167 Ideographic Variation Database Submission

The Ideographic Variation Database provides a registry for collections
of unique variation sequences containing unified ideographs, allowing
for standardized interchange according to UTS #37, Ideographic Variation
Database. A submission to the Ideographic Variation Database has been
received for: "Combined registration of the Hanyo-Densi collection and
of sequences in that collection". Details are in the background document.

http://www.unicode.org/ivd/pri/pri167/index.html

Reviewers are encouraged to comment on any aspect of the submissions,
but more particularly on:

* whether the intent of a proposed collection is appropriately described
* whether the glyphic subset corresponding to a proposed sequence is
indeed a glyphic subset of the base character for the sequence
* whether the proposed sequences are congruent with the scope of their
collection, or whether a new collection may be more appropriate

If you have comments for official consideration, please post them by
submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode mail list, then please use
the following link to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware that
discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically
recorded as input to the IVD registrar. You must use the reporting link
above to generate comments for official consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

[Unicode Announcement] The Unicode Consortium Releases CLDR, Version 1.8

2010-03-17T08:59:00.000-07:00

Mountain View, CA, March 17, 2009 - The Unicode Consortium announced
today the release of the new version of the Unicode Common Locale Data
Repository (Unicode CLDR 1.8), providing key building blocks for
software to support the world's languages.

CLDR 1.8 contains data for 186 languages and 159 territories: 501
locales in all. Version 1.8 of the repository contains over 22% more
locale data than the previous release, with over 42,000 new or modified
data items from over 300 different contributors.

For this release, the Unicode Consortium partnered with ANLoc, the
African Network for Localization, a project sponsored by Canada's
International Development Research Centre (IDRC), to help extend modern
computing on the African continent. ANLoc's vision is to empower
Africans to participate in the digital age by enabling their languages
in computers. A sub-project of ANLoc, called Afrigen, focuses on
creating African locales.

The Afrigen-ANLoc project's mission is to create viable locale data for
at least 100 of the over 2000 languages spoken in Africa, and
incorporate the data into Unicode's CLDR project and OpenOffice.org.
Implementation of fundamental locale data within CLDR is a critical step
for providing computer applications that can be localized into these
African languages, thus reaching populations that have never before been
able to use their native languages on computers and mobile phones.

The Afrigen-ANLoc project selected approximately 200 candidate
languages, including all official languages recognized by a national
government and all languages with at least 500,000 native speakers.
Additional languages were incorporated when volunteers stepped forward.
Data was collected through the Afrigen-ANLoc project by native-speaking
volunteers around the world, entered via a web-based utility designed
specifically for this purpose, and then merged into the CLDR repository.
In all, over 150 volunteers gathered locale data for 72 African
languages, with data for 54 of those incorporated into the CLDR 1.8
release. 41 of these languages are completely new to the Unicode CLDR
project while 13 others existed in earlier versions of CLDR and were
enhanced with additional data. These languages are spoken in 26
countries across the entire African continent.

"The partnership with Afrigen has been a huge benefit for us," says John
Emmons, vice-chair of the Unicode CLDR technical committee and lead CLDR
engineer for IBM. "The Afrigen effort has allowed us to bring many new
languages on board that we wouldn't be able to do through our normal
process, while still maintaining the level of quality and consistency
that we require for every language."

For more information about Unicode CLDR 1.8, see
http://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-1-8

The Afrigen-ANLoc data collection tool was developed by Louise
Berthilson of IT46 (http://www.it46.se), and the project is managed by
Martin Benjamin, director of Kamusi Project International
(http://kamusi.org). For more information about the African Network for
Localization, see http://www.africanlocalisation.net. For more
information about the Afrigen-ANLoc project, see
http://www.it46.se/afrigen. For more information about IDRC, see
http://www.idrc.ca.

About the Unicode Consortium

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop,
extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard and related globalization
standards.

The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum of
corporations and organizations in the computer and information
processing industry. Members are: Adobe Systems, Apple, DENIC eG,
Google, Government of India, Government of Tamil Nadu, IBM, Microsoft,
Monotype Imaging, Oracle, The Society for Natural Language Technology
Research, SAP, Sybase, The University of California (Berkeley), The
University of California (Santa Cruz), Yahoo!, plus well over a hundred
Associate, Liaison, and Individual members.

For more information, please contact the Unicode Consortium.
http://www.unicode.org/contacts.html

[Unicode Announcement] New Public Review Issues for Unicode 6.0 UAXes

2010-02-26T14:43:00.000-08:00

The Unicode Consortium is revising the Unicode Standard Annexes for
eventual release of Unicode 6.0. A standard part of our development
process is to open all of the annexes for public review. All the annexes
are currently available on the PRI page. We encourage all interested
parties to participate in this review. To look at the annexes and make
suggestions for additions and improvements to their content, please see
the Public Review Issues page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/

Comments should be submitted by May 3, 2010.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by
submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode mail list, then please
use the following link to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware
that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically
recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above
to generate comments for UTC consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

[Unicode Announcement] Print-on-Demand Survey for Unicode 6.0

2010-02-16T11:47:00.000-08:00

The Unicode Standard 5.2 is now online only and can be printed freely.
For the next edition of the standard, Unicode 6.0, the editorial
committee would like to find out whether people are interested in the
ability to obtain bound copies of the standard in the form of
individually available volumes covering different selections of the
text and code charts. (Unlike in the past, Unicode 6.0 will not be
published as a single volume by an outside publisher.)

If there is sufficient interest, the text and code charts could be
delivered using Print-on-Demand technology. To prepare for that
option, the editorial committee would need to do some restructuring.
In either case, users would be able to print any part of the online
files free of charge; the print-on-demand option would simply offer a
convenient way to purchase bound copies of some or all sections of the
standard.

We have created a very brief survey that gives some options and
estimates costs for a print-on-demand version of Unicode 6.0. We would
appreciate your feedback. There is also space on the form for
comments. Feel free to forward this link to others who are not on the
Unicode mailing lists, but who might be interested. The survey will
close on February 24.

The survey can be found here: http://www.unicode.org/pod-survey

The Unicode Editorial Committee

[Unicode Announcement] New lower individual member rates

2010-01-05T16:10:00.000-08:00

Individual and student members are important contributors to the work of
the Unicode Consortium. From the encoding of rare and minority scripts
to collecting and vetting locale data, individuals help develop the next
generation of Unicode standards and data. To promote participation, the
Unicode Consortium has lowered the price for individual memberships to
$75 per year and student memberships to $35 per year. The new rates are
effective January 1, 2010 and existing memberships will be extended in
accordance with the new lower prices.

The Unicode Consortium has also moved to online publication of the
standard as of Version 5.2, and the entire text of the standard is
freely available for online reading and printing. Copies of the book are
no longer printed and are therefore no longer included as a membership
benefit.

For more information on the benefits of individual membership and how to
join, see: http://www.unicode.org/consortium/join.html

[Unicode Announcement] Unicode Releases Common Locale Data Repository, Version 1.7.2

2009-12-10T17:10:00.000-08:00

Mountain View, CA, December, 10, 2009 - The Unicode® Consortium
announced today the release of version 1.7.2 of the Unicode Common
Locale Data Repository (CLDR). Unicode CLDR 1.7.2 is an update release,
with no new translations. The main changes are modifications to Unicode
language and locale identifiers to correspond to the recent version of
BCP47.

*About Unicode CLDR*
Unicode CLDR provides key building blocks for software to support the
world's languages. Unicode CLDR is by far the largest and most extensive
standard repository of locale data. This data is used by a wide spectrum
of companies for their software internationalization and localization:
adapting software to the conventions of different languages for such
common software tasks as formatting of dates, times, time zones,
numbers, and currency values; sorting text; choosing languages or
countries by name; transliterating different alphabets; and many others.
For more information about the Unicode CLDR project (including charts)
see http://cldr.unicode.org.

*About the Unicode Consortium*
The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop,
extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard and related globalization
standards. The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum
of corporations and organizations in the computer and information
processing industry: Adobe Systems, Apple, DENIC eG, Google, Government
of India, Government of Tamil Nadu, IBM, Microsoft, Monotype Imaging,
Oracle, SAP, Society for Natural Language Technology Research, Sun
Microsystems, Sybase, The University of California at Berkeley, Yahoo!,
plus well over a hundred Associate, Liaison, and Individual members. For
more information, please contact the Unicode Consortium
(http://www.unicode.org/).

[Unicode Announcement] New draft Unicode specifications for IDNA and Security

2009-11-19T17:12:00.000-08:00

There are new drafts of Unicode specifications connected with IDNA and
Security:

* UTS #46: Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing
* UTS #39: Unicode Security Mechanisms
* UTR #36: Unicode Security Considerations

The major changes include the following:

http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr46/tr46-2.html

* Major rework based on the UTC and editorial committee decisions.
The text and specification are simplified considerably.
* The FAQ section was separated from the document and rewritten as
an independent FAQ page
* Draft data files were restructured
* Added a comparison table of IDNA2003, UTS46, and IDNA2008

/NOTE: IDNA2008 is not final, and the draft UTS46 may undergo changes
depending on the final form of IDNA2008/

http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr39/tr39-3.html

* The confusable data was revised to add data extracted from a
comparison of font data from Windows and Mac
* Additional mappings were also added, such as "rn" ~ "m"
* The characters recommended for identifiers were updated based on
UAX 31

http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr36/tr36-8.html

* Added new sections
o 3.6 Secure Encoding Conversion
o 3.7 Enabling Lossless Conversion to Unicode

The public review period for these specifications ends on January 26, 2010.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by
submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode mail list, then please
use the following link to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware
that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically
recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above
to generate comments for UTC consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

[Unicode Announcement] Two New Public Review Issues (UAX #15, UAX #44 Proposed Updates)

2009-11-17T14:11:00.000-08:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted two new issues for public
review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/

Review period for the new items closes on January 26, 2010.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents.
Briefly, the new issues are:

Issue #151 Proposed Update UAX #44: Unicode Character Database
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr44/tr44-5.html
This revision indicates the changed status of several properties as
Deprecated, adds tables listing Deprecated and Stabilized properties,
and extends the discussion of the significance of the
Bidi_Mirroring_Glyph property.

Issue #152 Proposed Update UAX #15: Unicode Normalization Forms
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr15/tr15-32.html
This revision corrects the definitions of classes of characters in the
Composition Exclusion Table.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by
submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode mail list, then please
use the following link to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware
that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically
recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above
to generate comments for UTC consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

[Unicode Announcement] Unicode Collation Algorithm Version 5.2 Released

2009-10-21T13:12:00.000-07:00

Version 5.2 of the Unicode Collation Algorithm has been released.
See http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr10/.
This version resynchronizes the Unicode Collation Algorithm with all
of the updates for the Unicode Standard, Version 5.2. Please note
the following changes and issues for implementations:

* The text of UTS #10 has been updated. Among other changes, the
revised text for UTS #10 makes it clear that the BASE for
implicit generation of weights for Han characters does not
include unassigned code points.
* There are small changes in Gujarati, Telugu, Malayalam
(including weighting for chillus), Tamil, and Sinhala. While
these changes move in the direction of expected behavior, good
results will only come from tailoring for particular languages,
such as with CLDR.
* There have been significant changes to the ordering of many
combining marks. Many combining marks that are not in customary
use in modern languages now have the same secondary weight, and
will only be distinguished on a fourth level, by code point
ordering. This can be seen by looking at the Unicode Collation
Charts (http://unicode.org/charts/collation/). In 5.2, many
characters now have a white background, indicating that they
sort exactly the same as the previous character, unless a 4th
(codepoint) level is used.
* Implementations of UCA should take note that the increased
number of characters may cause overflows if the implementing
code makes certain assumptions or optimizations. This can result
either from the new character additions (which increase the
number of distinct weights in the table) or because of changes
in the way the weights, particularly for secondary weight
values, are assigned in the table. The latter change may result
in unexpected numbers of characters having the same weight.

[Unicode Announcement] Public Review Issue #150: Draft UTS #46 Updated

2009-10-20T12:24:00.000-07:00

The draft UTS#46 Unicode IDNA Compatible Preprocessing has been updated.
There are a number of new review notes pointing out issues and asking
for feedback. There are also new tables: one comparing behavior of
compatibility and escaped versions of FULL STOP in delimiting labels
between different browsers, and one comparing the allowed and disallowed
repertoires when processing IDNs according to the IDNA2003, IDNA2008,
and UTS #46 specifications. There are also many improvements and
clarifications of the text.

See: http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr46/

Review period closes October 26, 2009.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by
submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode mail list, then please
use the following link to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware
that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically
recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above
to generate comments for UTC consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

[Unicode Announcement] Unicode 5.2.0 Released

2009-10-01T14:14:00.000-07:00

Unicode 5.2 has been released! The data files, code charts, and Unicode
Standard Annexes for this version are final and are posted on the
Unicode site.

For Unicode 5.2, the core specification is no longer just a delta
document applied to the book; instead, the entire core specification,
with all textual changes integrated, will be available on the Unicode
site. As of this announcement, the first five chapters are available;
the other chapters will follow soon.

For full details about what is new or changed in this release, see the
version documentation for Unicode 5.2 at:

http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.2.0/

[Unicode Announcement] Unicode Haiku Contest

2009-09-29T14:55:00.000-07:00

Unicode Haiku Contest
Here's your chance to show what you think of Unicode - with poetry!
Enter the Unicode Haiku contest, and meet the bar set by the immortal Haiku:

Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
(aka Blue Screen)

The tricorder broke
Communicator is dead
And my shirt is red

The winners are to be announced at the upcoming Unicode Conference, Oct 14-16 (but you don't have to attend the conference to win). The first prize is a myTouch 3G phone, sponsored by Google. (If your company is interested in sponsoring an additional prize, contact Magda Danish, http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html). All submissions must arrive by October 12, 2009.

Please submit your entry at http://unicode.org/conference/haiku.html.
Each entry should be 3 lines, with 5 syllables on the first, 7 on the second, and 5 on the third. You can enter as many different submissions as you want. Submissions are judged based on their relation to Unicode and/or SW Globalization, and most importantly, cleverness and whimsy.

[Unicode Announcement] Remote Access Registration Now Offered at 33rd Internationalization & Unicode Conference

2009-09-24T15:05:00.000-07:00

[IUC 32 Logo]<http://www.unicodeconference.org/keynote-e>

[Banner]

What's Your Excuse For Not Attending IUC 33?

I can't attend IUC 33 because...

1. chained to my desk
2. don't like flying
3. baby is due
4. standby for jury duty
5. no travel budget

[http://www.omg.org/images/emails/rachel-2.jpg]

Well, stop the excuses! Attend remotely!

You can attend through the new remote access option for the 33rd Internationalization & Unicode conference!

The conference organizer will be broadcasting via secure connection all of the IUC 33 conference for the first time. Every presentation on every track, including the keynote, will be available. Remotely sit in on presentations from different tracks from the comfort of your home or office. Standard registration fee is US$795, with additional discounts for Unicode and LISA Members. The remote access IUC conference is BYOC (Bring Your Own Coffee).

Or if you would still prefer to attend in person visit http://www.unicodeconference.org/vc-e.

About the Internationalization & Unicode Conference
The Internationalization & Unicode Conference is the premier technical conference for both software and Web internationalization. Unicode and internationalization experts, implementers, clients and vendors are invited to attend this unique conference. The program committee has created an exciting program full of new and cutting-edge topics that is relevant and engaging for the internationalization community. The three-day conference will feature a full day of tutorials followed by two days of presentations, panels and discussions. There will also be technology exhibits and demonstrations. The interactive format makes the Internationalization & Unicode Conference a great place to meet and exchange ideas with leading experts, find out about the needs of potential clients, or get information about new and existing Unicode and internationalization-enabled products.

The 33rd Internationalization & Unicode Conference is sponsored by Gold Sponsors Adobe, Inc. and WinSoft; Media Sponsors LISA Globalization Insider and MultiLingual Computing Inc. and Organizational Sponsor Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA).

Gold Sponsors:

Media Sponsors:

Organizational Sponsor:

[http://www.unicodeconference.org/images/logos/ADOBE-logo.jpg]

[WinSoft Banner]<http://www.unicodeconference.org/winsoft-banner/>

[LISA Globalization Insider]<http://www.unicodeconference.org/lisa-gl-banner>

[MultiLingual]

[LISA]<http://www.unicodeconference.org/lisa-banner>

The hotel registration deadline has been extended to September 30, 2009.

Sponsorships and exhibit space are available; for more information on sponsoring contact Ken Berk at kenberk@omg.org<mailto:kenberk@omg.org>, +1-781-444 0404. For exhibiting questions email event_marketing@omg.org<mailto:event_marketing@omg.org>. For all other questions email info@unicodeconference.org<mailto:info@unicodeconference.org>.

________________________________

About The Unicode Consortium
The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard and related globalization standards.

The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum of corporations and organizations in the computer and information processing industry. Members are: Adobe Systems, Apple, DENIC eG, Google, Government of India, Government of Tamil Nadu, IBM, Microsoft, Monotype Imaging, Oracle, The Society for Natural Language Technology Research, Sun Microsystems, Sybase, The University of California at Berkeley, Yahoo!, plus well over a hundred Associate, Liaison, and Individual members.

For more information, please contact the Unicode Consortium www.unicode.org/contacts.html<http://www.unicode.org/contacts.html>.

About the Event Producer
OMG(tm) is the Event Producer for the Internationalization & Unicode Conferences. OMG is an open membership, not-for-profit consortium that produces and maintains computer industry specifications for interoperable enterprise applications. Our specifications include MDA(r), UML(r), CORBA(r), MOF(tm), XMI(r) and CWM(tm). OMG's specifications are all available for download by everyone without charge.

For more information about OMG, visit us online at www.omg.org<http://www.omg.org>.

If you would prefer not to receive messages from the OMG, or have address corrections, please reply to this email message, requesting Unsubscribe or describing your address corrections in the body of the text. Please leave subject line intact.

[http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/imgtracker.cgi?e=1IUC33RA092409(!*EMAIL*!)]

[Unicode Announcement] Public Review Issue: Draft UTS #46: Unicode Compatible IDNA Preprocessing

2009-09-15T17:19:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public
review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/

Review periods for the new items close on October 26, 2009.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents.
Briefly, the new issue is:

http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr46/tr46-2.html

Issue #150 Draft UTS #46: Unicode Compatible IDNS Preprocessing

This document provides a specification for processing that provides for
compatibility between older and newer versions of internationalized
domain names (IDN) in client software (lookup). It allows
applications--browsers, emailers, and so on--to be able to handle both
the original version of internationalized domain names(IDNA2003) and the
newer version (IDNA2008), avoiding possible interoperability and
security problems.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by
submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode mail list, then please
use the following link to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware
that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically
recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above
to generate comments for UTC consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

[Unicode Announcement] Unicode Collation Algorithm 5.2.0 Beta Data Files Now Available

2009-09-08T17:44:00.000-07:00

Version 5.2.0 of The Unicode Collation Algorithm (UCA) is being prepared
for release in parallel with Unicode 5.2. The UCA data files have been
recently updated and are ready for review. Please see the Public Review
Issue:
http://www.unicode.org/review/#pri143
as well as the beta data files and collation test files:
http://www.unicode.org/Public/UCA/5.2.0/

1. The data files contain weights for all new assigned characters.
a. There have been significant changes to the ordering of
many combining marks. Many of those that are not in customary
use in modern languages now have the same secondary weight,
and will only be distinguished on a fourth level, by code
point ordering.
b. The ordering for Tamil and Malayalam has been improved,
but would still need tailoring for the Tamil and Malayalam
languages.
2. The text of UTS#10 has been updated. See the
modifications section for details:
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr10/tr10-19.html#Modifications

Time is very short for this beta review, which closes on September 23,
2009, so reviewers are urged to download and test the files as soon as
they can.

Feedback should be sent through the usual Error Reporting Form:
http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

[Unicode Announcement] Last Call for Unicode 5.2 Data

2009-08-26T17:48:00.000-07:00

The data files in the Unicode Character Database for Unicode 5.2 have
been revised to include all of the authorized changes from the last UTC
meeting. If you use any of the Unicode data in your implementations,
please update a test version of your implementation to use those files
and run your tests. If there are any showstopper bugs, please report
them (using http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html) as soon as possible.

From this point, the only adjustments that will be made to the data
will be on the basis of showstopper bugs, including bugs uncovered in
the process of updating the Unicode Collation data files for UCA 5.2.

[Unicode Announcement] 33rd Internationalization & Unicode Conference - Keynote Speaker Announcement

2009-08-26T12:56:00.000-07:00

33rd Internationalization & Unicode Conference
Features Sessions on Security, Open Source,
Social Networking and Cloud Computing

The Unicode® Consortium announces that Nicholas Ostler, Chairman, Foundation for Endangered Languages, will keynote the 33rd Internationalization & Unicode® Conference (IUC). The conference, sponsored by Gold Sponsors Adobe, Inc. and WinSoft, will take place in San Jose, Calif., USA; October 14-16, 2009. For more information and to register please visit www.unicodeconference.org/keynote-e.

Mr. Ostler will present "The Alphabetic Principle and its Enemies."

The alphabetic principle for writing seems brilliantly simple, and its implementation, often subverting other options, has often caused explosive growths in literacy, with important historical consequences for cultural survival. Its great advantages are economy of effort in the learner, and ready application to new languages. However, it has drawbacks as to speed for the initiated user, and also (by being essentially mechanical and phonetic) in representing many of the cultural overtones which people like their written language to have. There is, too, a certain resistance to the role of art in writing. But as alphabetic traditions age, becoming less purely alphabetic, these disadvantages can be reduced. New structures may emerge, meaningful patterns that leave alphabets far behind. Alphabetic scripts have more recently revealed new aspects, defining a convenient order to index anything, inspiring the phonemic principle of structural linguistics, and later mapping more easily!
than other systems onto digital systems, and hence a whole new set of functions for written language. But the alphabet remains a rather arbitrary means of representing meanings, since its icons are parasitic on the particular sounds of particular words in particular languages, a long way from thoughts.

About the Keynote Presenter
---------------------------
Nicholas Ostler holds an MA in classics, philosophy and economics from Oxford, and a PhD in linguistics from MIT. His first job was teaching in Japan, later consulting on machine translation for Fujitsu. Returning to England, he worked in IT research during the 1980s and '90s, especially with the UK government, and the European Union. He has been Chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages (www.ogmios.org) since its inception in 1996. He also edited its newsletter Ogmios until 2006. Within descriptive linguistics, his main research field has been the grammar of the (extinct) Chibcha language of Colombia. He has served on the board of the British National Corpus, the LSA's Committee for Endangered Languages, and on the editorial board of the International Journal of American Linguistics. As a writer, his book "Empires of the Word: a language history of the world" (HarperCollins, 2005) traced the histories of the large literate languages, from Sumerian to English, cons!
idering the factors that make for large-scale expansion. Later, "Ad Infinitum: a biography of Latin" (Walker & Co., 2007) considered the attitudes that have accompanied the Latin language throughout its 2,500 year recorded history. He is now at work on a book about the prospects of English as a global lingua franca, in the light of the competition, past and present. This is due for publication in 2010.

About the Internationalization & Unicode Conference
---------------------------------------------------
The Internationalization & Unicode Conference is the premier technical conference for both software and Web internationalization. Unicode and internationalization experts, implementers, clients and vendors are invited to attend this unique conference. The program committee has created an exciting program full of new and cutting-edge topics that is relevant and engaging for the internationalization community. The three-day conference will feature a full day of tutorials followed by two days of presentations, panels and discussions. There will also be technology exhibits and demonstrations. The interactive format makes the Internationalization & Unicode Conference a great place to meet and exchange ideas with leading experts, find out about the needs of potential clients, or get information about new and existing Unicode and internationalization-enabled products.
The 33rd Internationalization & Unicode Conference is sponsored by Gold Sponsors Adobe, Inc. and WinSoft; Media Sponsors LISA Globalization Insider and MultiLingual Computing Inc. and Organizational Sponsor Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA).

The early-bird registration deadline is September 4, 2009; the hotel registration deadline is September 23, 2009. For full conference details and to register, please click here.
Sponsorships and exhibit space are available; for more information on sponsoring contact Ken Berk at kenberk@omg.org, +1-781-444 0404. For exhibiting questions email event_marketing@omg.org. For all other questions email info@unicodeconference.org.

About The Unicode Consortium
----------------------------
The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard and related globalization standards.

The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum of corporations and organizations in the computer and information processing industry. Members are: Adobe Systems, Apple, DENIC eG, Google, Government of India, Government of Tamil Nadu, IBM, Microsoft, Monotype Imaging, Oracle, The Society for Natural Language Technology Research, Sun Microsystems, Sybase, The University of California at Berkeley, Yahoo!, plus well over a hundred Associate, Liaison, and Individual members.

For more information, please contact the Unicode Consortium www.unicode.org/contacts.html.

About the Event Producer
------------------------
OMGT is the Event Producer for the Internationalization & Unicode Conferences. OMG is an open membership, not-for-profit consortium that produces and maintains computer industry specifications for interoperable enterprise applications. Our specifications include MDA®, UML®, CORBA®, MOFT, XMI® and CWMT. OMG's specifications are all available for download by everyone without charge.

For more information about OMG, visit us online at www.omg.org.

[Unicode Announcement] Unicode 5.2 Beta - Chapters 1-5 Available

2009-07-28T16:15:00.000-07:00

The ongoing beta review for Unicode 5.2 has been supplemented
today with the availability of drafts for the first part of the
consolidated text of the Unicode Standard, Version 5.2.

The landing page for Unicode 5.2 summarizes the major
new additions and changes for Version 5.2:

http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.2.0/

Links to pdf versions of Chapters 1 through 5 of the standard
are available on that page.

We would like to remind folks that the period for beta review
of the Version 5.2 data files and the Unicode Standard Annexes
is rapidly drawing to a close. The meeting of the Unicode
Technical Committee in August will be making the final decisions
on any reported problems in the data or the annexes, so now
is the time to check the posted data files and documents.
See the beta review page for details:

http://www.unicode.org/versions/beta.html

==================================================

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by
submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode mail list, then please
use the following link to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware
that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically
recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above
to generate comments for UTC consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

[Unicode Announcement] 33rd Internationalization & Unicode Conference - Program Online

2009-07-15T12:59:00.000-07:00

33rd Internationalization & Unicode Conference
Features Sessions on Security, Open Source, Social Networking and Cloud Computing

The Unicode(r) Consortium announces the program for the 33rd Internationalization & Unicode(r) Conference (IUC). The conference, sponsored by Gold Sponsor Adobe, Inc., will take place in San Jose, Calif., USA; October 14-16, 2009. The conference program is available online here.

The program committee has created an exciting program full of new and cutting-edge topics that is relevant and engaging for the internationalization community. The three-day conference will feature a full day of tutorials followed by two days of presentations, panels and discussions. There will also be technology exhibits and demonstrations.

Highlights of the Conference:
============================
Tutorials in Three Tracks:
-------------------------
An Introduction to Writing Systems & Unicode
Internationalization: An Introduction
Building a Custom Keyboard Layout for the Mac with Ukulele and XML
Arabic Script: Structure, Geographic and Regional Classification
Unicode - a Grand Tour
Web Internationalization - Standards and Best Practices
Building Multilingual Websites in Joomla [Drupal]
Creating XHTML/HTML Pages with Right-to-Left Scripts
Free Software stack for Unicode Text Rendering
Presenters come from such organizations as DecoType, Amazon, Penn State, Red Hat/GNOME, W3C, XenCraft, and Yahoo! Inc.

Sessions in Three Tracks:
------------------------
* Session tracks are categorized by Programming Languages, Fonts and Typography, Unicode News, and I18n Standards News on Thursday morning; with Open Source Libraries, Assuring Quality, and Scripts tracks in the afternoon. On Friday, track topics include Development Platforms, Mobile Programming, Internationalization in Practice, and Leveraging CLDR in the morning; and Translation Services API, Bidirectional Text, and Case Studies in the afternoon.

* The following is just a small sample of some of the cutting-edge presentations that will be given at IUC 33. For the full program, visit the IUC 33 Web site.

- Internationalization for JavaScript applications
- Emoji in Unicode: Cell Phones Meet the Internet
- Banking in the Cloud: Challenges of Internationalizing Banking Software
- Twanguages of the World: a Language Census of Twitter
- HarfBuzz, the Free and Open OpenType Shaping Engine

* Session Presenters come from such organizations as Adobe, Inc.; Amazon; Apple, Inc.; Casaba Security; DataDirect Technologies; DecoType; UC Berkeley; Google Inc.; HighTech Passport; IBM; Intel Corporation; Microsoft; Monotype Imaging; University of Michigan; XenCraft; Yahoo! Inc.; and Yale University
The Internationalization & Unicode Conference is the premier technical conference for both software and Web internationalization. Unicode and internationalization experts, implementers, clients and vendors are invited to attend this unique conference. The interactive format makes the Internationalization & Unicode Conference a great place to meet and exchange ideas with leading experts, find out about the needs of potential clients, or get information about new and existing Unicode and internationalization-enabled products.

Gold sponsor: ADOBE - Media Sponsor: Multilingual

The early-bird registration deadline is September 4, 2009; the hotel registration deadline is September 23, 2009. For full conference details and to register, please click here. Sponsorships and exhibit space are available; for more information on sponsoring contact Ken Berk at kenberk@omg.org, +1-781-444 0404. For exhibiting questions email event_marketing@omg.org. For all other questions email info@unicodeconference.org.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About The Unicode Consortium
The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard and related globalization standards.
The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum of corporations and organizations in the computer and information processing industry. Members are: Adobe Systems, Apple, DENIC eG, Google, Government of India, Government of Tamil Nadu, IBM, Microsoft, Monotype Imaging, Oracle, SAP, The Society for Natural Language Technology Research, Sun Microsystems, Sybase, The University of California at Berkeley, Yahoo!, plus well over a hundred Associate, Liaison, and Individual members.
For more information, please contact the Unicode Consortium www.unicode.org/contacts.html.

[Unicode Announcement] New Public Review #149: UTS #22; and other PRI updates

2009-07-08T16:05:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public review
and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/

Review period for the new item closes on August 3, 2009.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents.
Briefly, the new issue is:

PRI #149
Proposed Update UTS #22: Unicode Character Mapping Markup Language

This proposed update includes editorial fixes and clarifications based
on community feedback. There is a small change in the DTD from version
three to this proposed version five (a new default attribute value). See
the Modification History and the highlighted changes for details.

There are also two updates to open Public Review Issues:

PRI #136
Proposed Update UAX #14: Unicode Line Breaking Algorithm

The text of UAX #14 has been revised throughout, with both substantive
and editorial changes. A new Line_Break class CP has been added, and the
rule LB30 has been reintroduced, to address an edge case involving
breaks around parenthesized letters. More new Southeast Asian scripts
and characters have been added to the Line_Break class SA. The lists of
characters representing each Line_Break class are now exemplary, rather
than exhaustive in the text. Please review the new text carefully.

PRI #134
Proposed Update UAX #9: Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm

The latest revision also includes a new conformance test file, which
implementers should carefully review. See BidiTest.txt in the data files
directory: http://www.unicode.org/Public/5.2.0/ucd/

The closing dates remain the same.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by
submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode mail list, then please use
the following link to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware that
discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically
recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above to
generate comments for UTC consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

[Unicode Announcement] Draft code charts for Unicode 5.2 beta review

2009-07-01T16:46:00.000-07:00

Draft code charts are now available for the Unicode 5.2 beta review.
Please check the code charts carefully to verify correctness of the new
characters added to Unicode 5.2 and to ensure that there are no
regressions for previously encoded characters. The draft code charts
are located in:

http://www.unicode.org/Public/5.2.0/charts/ or
ftp://www.unicode.org/Public/5.2.0/charts/

The Unicode Consortium appreciates the help provided by its many volunteers
who help in ensuring the best possible quality for the published code charts
for the Unicode Standard.

For further information about the beta, please see the beta page
http://www.unicode.org/versions/beta.html and the associated
Public Review Issues page: http://www.unicode.org/review/#148

[Unicode Announcement] Unicode Releases Common Locale Data Repository, Version 1.7.1

2009-06-29T15:38:00.000-07:00

Mountain View, CA, June 29, 2009 - The Unicode® Consortium announced
today the release of a new version of the Unicode Common Locale Data
Repository (Unicode CLDR 1.7.1), providing key building blocks for
software to support the world's languages. Unicode CLDR is by far the
largest and most extensive standard repository of locale data. This data
is used by a wide spectrum of companies for their software
internationalization and localization: adapting software to the
conventions of different languages for such common software tasks as
formatting of dates, times, time zones, numbers, and currency values;
sorting text; choosing languages or countries by name; transliterating
different alphabets; and many others.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CLDR 1.7.1 is an update release, with no new translations. The main
changes are fixes for numbering systems and currencies, but a number of
other bugs were fixed. See the CLDR 1.7.1 Release Note
<http://sites.google.com/site/cldr/index/downloads/cldr-1-7-1> for a
full list of changes. There were no changes in the LDML specification.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Unicode CLDR 1.7 is part of the Unicode locale data project, together
with the Unicode Locale Data Markup Language (LDML:
http://unicode.org/reports/tr35/). LDML is an XML format used for
general interchange of locale data, such as in Microsoft's .NET. For web
pages with different views of CLDR data, see
http://unicode.org/cldr/charts.html. For more information about the
Unicode CLDR project (including charts) see http://cldr.unicode.org. The
latest features of CLDR will also be showcased at the 33rd
Internationalization and Unicode Conference (IUC) on October 14-16, 2009
in San Jose, CA — see http://unicodeconference.org/
<http://www.unicodeconference.org/>.

About the Unicode Consortium

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop,
extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard and related globalization
standards. The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum
of corporations and organizations in the computer and information
processing industry. Members are: Adobe Systems, Apple, DENIC eG,
Google, Government of India, Government of Tamil Nadu, IBM, Microsoft,
Monotype Imaging, Oracle, SAP, The Society for Natural Language
Technology Research, Sun Microsystems, Sybase, The University of
California at Berkeley, Yahoo!, plus well over a hundred Associate,
Liaison, and Individual members.

For more information, please contact the Unicode Consortium
(http://unicode.org/ <http://www.unicode.org/>).

[Unicode Announcement] Unicode 5.2 beta, updates of UAX #9 and UAX #31

2009-06-23T11:43:00.000-07:00

As part of the Unicode 5.2 beta, the following proposed updates for
Unicode Standard Annexes have significant new revisions:

===

UAX #31 Unicode Identifier and Pattern Syntax
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr31/tr31-10.html

The main changes are the addition of characters and new scripts to
tables for:

* Candidates for Inclusion in Identifiers
* Candidate Characters for Exclusions from Identifiers
* Recommended Scripts

===

UAX#9 Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr9/tr9-20.html

The main changes are the addition of:

* a section on Bidi Conformance Testing
* the Bidi_Class BN to Rule X6 (removing certain characters from
Bidi processing)
* a clause in HL6 providing for mirroring of R and AL characters in
certain circumstances

===

More details are in the Modifications section of each document, and
there remain some editorial notes asking for feedback on particular
issues. Feedback for both of these documents is solicited by August 3, 2009.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by
submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode mail list, then please use
the following link to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware that
discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically
recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above to
generate comments for UTC consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

[Unicode Announcement] Unicode 5.2.0 Beta Review Starts

2009-06-10T18:52:00.000-07:00

The next version of the Unicode Standard will be Version 5.2.0. The beta
information page for Unicode 5.2.0 is located at:

http://www.unicode.org/versions/beta.html

This version is planned for release in October 2009. A beta version of
the 5.2.0 Unicode Character Database files is also available for public
comment. We strongly encourage implementers to download these files and
test them with their programs, well before the end of the beta period,
August 3, 2009. These files are located in:

http://www.unicode.org/Public/5.2.0/
ftp://www.unicode.org/Public/5.2.0/

For detailed information and guidance on how to focus your review, see
the section Notable Issues for Beta Testers on the beta page.

The beta information page tells how to report comments and initiate
discussions.

[Unicode Announcement] New Public Review Issue #147: Proposed Deprecation of U+0673 ARABIC LETTER ALEF WITH WAVY HAMZA BELOW

2009-05-28T15:25:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee has posted a new issue for public
review and comment. Details are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/

Review periods for the new item closes on August 3, 2009.

Please see the page for links to discussion and relevant documents.
Briefly, the new issue is:

PRI #147: Proposed Deprecation of U+0673 ARABIC LETTER ALEF WITH WAVY
HAMZA BELOW

The UTC has recently approved a proposal to encode an ARABIC WAVY HAMZA
BELOW for a future version of the Unicode Standard. That character is
used productively in Kashmiri and other languages, and is applied to
letters other than ALEF. The intent is to deprecate the existing
character U+0673 ARABIC LETTER ALEF WITH WAVY HAMZA BELOW, in favor of
the sequence of an ALEF plus the new ARABIC WAVY HAMZA BELOW. (Because
of normalization stability constraints, a canonical equivalence relation
cannot be established.)

The UTC is seeking feedback on whether U+0673 should be deprecated when
ARABIC WAVY HAMZA BELOW is encoded. Pertinent information would include
data on how widespread usage of this character is. Note that deprecation
of a character does not mean removal of that character from the
standard; it merely constitutes a strong recommendation not to use the
character.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by
submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode mail list, then please
use the following link to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware
that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically
recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above
to generate comments for UTC consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

[Unicode Announcement] 33rd IUC - Call for Participation Deadline EXTENDED to Thursday, May 28th

2009-05-21T16:28:00.000-07:00

33rd Internationalization & Unicode Conference
REMINDER: Call for Participation Deadline EXTENDED to Thursday, May 28th

The Unicode(r) Consortium announces a call for participation in The Thirty-third Internationalization & Unicode(r) Conference (IUC 33), taking place in San Jose, Calif., USA; October 14-16, 2009. The call for participation runs until Thursday, May 28. The annual conference is produced by OMG(tm). Details about the conference and the call for participation are available at http://www.unicodeconference.org/iuc33call.

The Internationalization & Unicode Conference is the premier annual technical conference focusing on multilingual, global software and Web internationalization. Each IUC conference features a variety of tutorials and conference sessions that cover current topics related to Web and software internationalization, globalization, and Unicode.

IUC 33 will include sessions with a special focus on emerging technologies, social networks, cloud computing, evolving standards, and best practices in internationalization for management, development and testing. Organizations are specifically invited to submit proposals on their real-world experiences with globalization efforts. The conference Program Committee is also seeking technical and business-focused presentations on case studies, experience reports, evaluations or research papers on topics relevant to (but not limited to):

New and upcoming globalization, internationalization and Unicode technologies
Internationalized Domain Names
Implementation of Unicode, including new scripts and characters in Unicode 5.1
Current state of font development with regard to Unicode
Unicode in "the cloud"
Social networking and its impact on globalization and internationalization issues
Unicode conformance and international standards compliance issues
Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR)
Internationalization or enabling of applications or Web sites
Working with multilingual text and data
Global development best practices
Security and data-exchange issues
Business cases and technical issues for globalized software
Publishing and broadcasting for a global audience
Encoding and Internationalization challenges for governments
Unicode in the library and in university curricula
Internationalization of Web services and XML-based data formats
Support of South Asian and African languages

Tutorial Sessions are an important part of the conference. The Program Committee is seeking proposals on topics of interest to general software users, to project and program managers, and to technical attendees who need to build basic knowledge of Unicode and software internationalization. Tutorial topics can also include (but aren't limited to):

Best practices in localization process and technology
Users: making the most of international features in common applications
Unicode and internationalization in programming languages
Solutions for handling complex scripts
Platform technologies for internationalization
Program and project management of internationalization
Strategies and best practices for managing multilingual sites & content

Tutorial presenters receive complimentary registration and two nights lodging. Session presenters receive a fifty percent conference discount and two nights lodging. See the web site for full details and restrictions.

Proposals for panel sessions in any of the above areas are also welcomed. Interested individuals or organizations are invited to submit a brief (up to 600 word) abstract of their proposed conference presentation by Thursday, May 28 using this web form: www.unicodeconference.org/abstracts<http://www.unicodeconference.org/abstracts>.

The Program Committee will select presentations for inclusion in the program and notify authors by Tuesday, June 9. Final presentation materials will be required from all selected presenters by Monday August 28. The conference agenda will be available by Friday, June 12, and posted at www.unicodeconference.org.

Internationalization and Unicode experts, implementers, clients, teachers and vendors are invited to attend this unique conference. The interactive format makes the Internationalization & Unicode Conference a great place to meet and exchange ideas with leading experts, find out about the needs of potential clients, or get information about new and existing Unicode-enabled products.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About The Unicode Consortium
The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard and related globalization standards.

The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum of corporations and organizations in the computer and information processing industry. Members are: Adobe Systems, Apple, DENIC eG, Google, Government of India, Government of Tamil Nadu, IBM, Microsoft, Monotype Imaging, NetApp, Oracle, SAP, Sun Microsystems, Society for Natural Language Technology Research, Sybase, The University of California at Berkeley, Yahoo!, plus well over a hundred Associate, Liaison, and Individual members.

For more information, please contact the Unicode Consortium http://www.unicode.org.

For more information about OMG, visit us online at http://www.omg.org.