Unicode: Unicode Mark Davis Unicode Consortium President IBM Chief SW Globalization Architect 2003-09-24


Universal Character Encoding: Universal Character Encoding … Unique number for every character


Unifies all Languages : Unifies all Languages 96 thousand characters, so far All characters accessible at the same time, in the same document: A, Ž, Ш, Δ, ش, क, க, ಔ,… か, 上, 각, …..


Lingua Franca for Computers: Lingua Franca for Computers Developed andamp; supported by industry leaders: Apple, HP, IBM, JustSystem, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Sun, Sybase, Unisys, … Required by modern standards: XML, HTML, Java, ECMAScript (JavaScript), LDAP, CORBA 3.0, WML, Perl, etc. Implemented in: All modern operating systems, browsers, and other products


International Domain Names: International Domain Names Approved - Unicode-Based Examples: http://Юникод.com http://Βαλκανίων.com http://हमसब.com


Standard Resources: Standard Resources www.unicode.org Online Standard Technical Reports FAQs General Information Discussion Forums, Conferences


Programming Resources: Programming Resources System APIs: Windows, Java, Unix, Oracle, DB2, Sybase, Mac, Linux, … Languages Java, JavaScript, C#, Perl 5.6.0, C, C++, SQL, … Cross-platform libraries: ICU, Rosette, …


Stability: Stability Developers / other standards need absolute stability Characters are never moved or deleted Ordering of characters is by collation, not binary order. See UTS #10: Unicode Collation Algorithm Characters may be deprecated (discouraged). Characters never change names Annotations are used to clarify usage See Unicode Policies


Indic Support in Unicode: Indic Support in Unicode ISCII the basis for characters and allocation Consortium actively engaged with Indian Government, which is a member Welcomes addition of missing characters (e.g. Vedic), clarifications or corrections of usage


Structural Similarities with ISCII: Structural Similarities with ISCII Within script, layout and contents nearly identical Independent + dependent vowels Halant model for representing conjuncts conjuncts / half-forms not directly encoded represented by sequences instead Phonetic sequence – order in syllables


Structural Differences with ISCII: Structural Differences with ISCII Unicode is stateless: No shifting to get different scripts Each character has a unique number Unicode is uniform: No extension bytes necessary All characters coded in the same space


Additional Characters: Additional Characters Indian Government is developing proposals for: Additions of missing characters: Vedic Individual characters for certain scripts Annotations and Descriptions


Global Applications now support languages of India: Global Applications now support languages of India Companies supporting Indic with Unicode OpenType fonts Font support for Indic Microsoft Windows Java (IBM contributed ICU Indic Layout) Linux …


Benefits for India: Benefits for India All documents, anywhere in the world, can have Indic text Allows seamless multilingual documents in India including scriptures and minority languages Opens up software export market, beyond English Connects India to the world


How India Can Contribute: How India Can Contribute Effective Communication with the Unicode Consortium Provide Resources for Development Descriptions of Usage Descriptions of Character Shaping Transliteration Tables from Script to Script Collation Information OpenType fonts …


What Developers Can Do: What Developers Can Do Interwork with existing ISCII systems Move to Unicode for future developments Java, Windows, Linux, …


The Future: The Future The world is moving rapidly to Unicode Unicode makes India open to the world The world comes to you, and You go to the world You can help


Q & A: Q andamp; A


Backup Slides: Backup Slides


Multiple Forms : Multiple Forms UTF-8: maximal compatibility with 8-bit systems UTF-16: good storage, interoperability with Windows/Java UTF-32: simplest processing Fast, lossless conversion See Forms of Unicode