icu-announce — [Moderated] Important announcements about the ICU project

[icu-announce] ICU 75 Released

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

We are pleased to announce the release of Unicode® ICU 75. It updates to CLDR
45 <https://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-45> (beta blog
<https://blog.unicode.org/2024/04/unicode-cldr-v45-beta-available-for.html>)
locale data with new locales and various additions and corrections. C++
code now requires C++17 (C code now requires C11) and is being made more
robust.

The CLDR MessageFormat 2.0 specification is now in technology preview
<https://github.com/unicode-org/message-format-wg?tab=readme-ov-file#messageformat-2-technical-preview>,
together with a corresponding

update of the ICU4J (Java) tech preview and a new ICU4C (C++) tech preview.

For details, please see https://icu.unicode.org/download/75.

Best regards,

Markus Scherer for the ICU Project

[icu-announce] ICU 75 Release Candidate available

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

We are pleased to announce the release candidate for Unicode® ICU 75. It
updates to CLDR 45 <https://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-45> (alpha
blog
<https://blog.unicode.org/2024/03/unicode-cldr-v45-alpha-available-for.html>)
locale data with new locales and various additions and corrections. C++
code now requires C++17 and is being made more robust.

The CLDR MessageFormat 2.0 specification is now in technology preview
<https://github.com/unicode-org/message-format-wg?tab=readme-ov-file#messageformat-2-technical-preview>,
together with a corresponding

update of the ICU4J (Java) tech preview and a new ICU4C (C++) tech preview.

For details, please see https://icu.unicode.org/download/75.

Please test this release candidate on your platforms and report bugs and
regressions by Monday, 2024-apr-15, via the icu-support
<https://icu.unicode.org/contacts> mailing list, and/or please find/submit
error reports <https://icu.unicode.org/bugs>.

Please do not use this release candidate in production.

The preliminary API reference documents are published on
unicode-org.github.io/icu-docs/ – follow the “Dev” links there.

Best regards,

Markus Scherer for the ICU Project

[icu-announce] ICU 74.2 Released: Date/time formatting bug fixes

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

We are pleased to announce the release of Unicode® ICU 74.2. It updates to CLDR
44.1 <https://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-44#h.nvqx283jwsx>
locale data.

These are maintenance releases for ICU 74 and CLDR 44, with limited sets of
bug fixes and no API or structural changes.

The CLDR bug fix relevant for ICU is for some formatting patterns that
erroneously had two adjacent space characters. These are coalesced into
one. (CLDR-17233 <https://unicode-org.atlassian.net/browse/CLDR-17233>)

Important: DateFormat.getInstanceForSkeleton() and the
DateTimePatternGenerator sometimes used the wrong patterns because they
failed to use/inherit certain data. (ICU-22575
<https://unicode-org.atlassian.net/browse/ICU-22575> — CLDR 44 had removed
some redundant data that ICU relied on.)

For details, please see https://icu.unicode.org/download/74.

Best regards,

Markus Scherer for the ICU Project

[icu-announce] ICU 74 Released

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

We are pleased to announce the release of Unicode® ICU 74. It updates
to Unicode
15.1
<http://blog.unicode.org/2023/09/announcing-unicode-standard-version-151.html>,
and to CLDR 44
<https://blog.unicode.org/2023/10/unicode-cldr-v44-available.html> locale
data with various additions and corrections.

ICU 74 and CLDR 44 are major releases, including a new version of Unicode
and major locale data improvements. They subsume the changes for the ICU
73.2 and CLDR 43.1 maintenance releases
<https://blog.unicode.org/2023/06/icu-732-cldr-431-released-gb18030.html>.

Unicode 15.1 adds source code security mechanisms, improves line breaking
for southeast Asian scripts, and adds important CJK unified ideographs.

CLDR 44 has added or improved data for a number of languages that have been
newly added to ICU, and has improved measurement unit handling, conversion,
and formatting.

ICU 74 implements these improvements, adds new C APIs for locale handling,
adds a plug-in API for word segmentation, and switches the Java build
system to Maven.

For details, please see https://icu.unicode.org/download/74.

Best regards,

Markus Scherer for the ICU Project

[icu-announce] ICU 74 Release Candidate available

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

We are pleased to announce the release candidate for Unicode® ICU 74. It
updates to Unicode 15.1
<http://blog.unicode.org/2023/09/announcing-unicode-standard-version-151.html>,
and to CLDR 44 <https://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-44> locale
data with various additions and corrections.

ICU 74 and CLDR 44 are major releases, including a new version of Unicode
and major locale data improvements. They subsume the changes for the ICU
73.2 and CLDR 43.1 maintenance releases
<https://blog.unicode.org/2023/06/icu-732-cldr-431-released-gb18030.html>.

For details, please see https://icu.unicode.org/download/74.

Please test this release candidate on your platforms and report bugs and
regressions by Wednesday, 2023-oct-26, via the icu-support
<https://icu.unicode.org/contacts> mailing list, and/or please find/submit
error reports <https://icu.unicode.org/bugs>.

Please do not use this release candidate in production.

The preliminary API reference documents are published on
unicode-org.github.io/icu-docs/ – follow the “Dev” links there.

Best regards,

Markus Scherer for the ICU Project

[icu-announce] ICU 73.2 Released: GB18030 compliance updates & compatibility fixes

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

We are pleased to announce the release of Unicode® ICU 73.2. It updates to CLDR
43.1 <https://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-43#h.qobmda543waj>
locale data with various additions and corrections. These are maintenance
releases for ICU 73 and CLDR 43, with limited sets of bug fixes and no API
or structural changes.

There are significant changes for GB18030-2022
<https://ken-lunde.medium.com/the-gb-18030-2022-standard-3d0ebaeb4132>
compliance support:

   -

   CLDR extends the support for “short” Chinese sort orders to cover some
   additional, required characters for Level 2. This is carried over into ICU
   collation.
   -

   ICU has a modified character conversion table, mapping some GB18030
   characters to Unicode characters that were encoded after GB18030-2005.


There are also changes for compatibility:

   -

   There are optional variants of time formats with AM/PM (only for
   English) using ASCII spaces in CLDR that can also be used in ICU via custom
   data generation. This is intended to help certain implementers transition
   to the improved patterns, which have used a narrow no-break space between
   the time and AM/PM since CLDR 42
   <https://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-42#h.ck7cpcrqqrq0>.
   -

      For how to generate ICU data with this option, look for alt="ascii"
      on tools/cldr/cldr-to-icu/README.md
      <https://github.com/unicode-org/icu/blob/main/tools/cldr/cldr-to-icu/README.md>
      -

   The changes to the word segmentation behavior of @ sign that were in
   CLDR 42 (ICU 72) have been reverted. These caused problems for certain
   parsers that did not expect @ to join to letters.


ICU 73.2 and CLDR 43.1 include several other bug fixes, including person
name formatting, and Cyrillic transforms.

For details, please see https://icu.unicode.org/download/73.

Best regards,

Markus Scherer for the ICU Project

[icu-announce] Upcoming Unicode event "CLDR, Beyond locale data"

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear ICU users, with our locale data coming from the Unicode CLDR project,
this event might interest you:

Upcoming Unicode event!


Join our webinar on Thursday, *June 22nd* hosted by Common Locale Data
Repository’s
(*CLDR*) workgroups who will cover topics such as Person Name Formatting,
the Keyboard Workgroup, CLDR resources, and vision and direction of CLDR.
The event will include speakers, demos, and a live Q&A session.

Attendees will learn about the power and capabilities of the new person
name formats and keyboard layouts, how to leverage CLDR’s respective
structures and future directions to support more locales and use cases.


Register
<https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/7716825385736/WN_pOwTiuEeQnywbi8u2RJMXg>
 now!


Best regards,
Markus Scherer, ICU-TC chair

[icu-announce] ICU 73 Released

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

We are pleased to announce the release of Unicode® ICU 73. It updates to CLDR
43 <https://blog.unicode.org/2023/04/the-unicode-cldr-v43-released.html>
locale data with various additions and corrections.

ICU 73 improves Japanese and Korean short-text line breaking, reduces C++
memory use in date formatting, and promotes the Java person name formatter
from tech preview to draft.

ICU 73 and CLDR 43 are minor releases, mostly focused on bug fixes and
small enhancements. (The fall CLDR/ICU releases will update to Unicode 15.1
which is planned for September.)

ICU 73 updates to the time zone data version 2023c (2023-mar). Note that
pre-1970 data for a number of time zones has been removed, as has been the
case in the upstream tzdata <https://www.iana.org/time-zones> release since
2021b.

For details, please see https://icu.unicode.org/download/73.

Best regards,

Markus Scherer for the ICU Project

[icu-announce] ICU 73 Release Candidate available

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

We are pleased to announce the release candidate for Unicode® ICU 73. It
updates to CLDR 43 <https://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-43>
locale data with various additions and corrections.

ICU 73 improves Japanese and Korean short-text line breaking, reduces C++
memory use in date formatting, and promotes the Java person name formatter
from tech preview to draft.

ICU 73 and CLDR 43 are minor releases, mostly focused on bug fixes and
small enhancements. (The fall CLDR/ICU releases will update to Unicode 15.1
which is planned for September.)

ICU 73 updates to the time zone data version 2023a (2023-mar) [2023b in the
final release]. Note that pre-1970 data for a number of time zones has been
removed, as has been the case in the upstream tzdata
<https://www.iana.org/time-zones> release since 2021b.

For details, please see https://icu.unicode.org/download/73.

Please test this release candidate on your platforms and report bugs and
regressions by Tuesday, 2023-apr-11, via the icu-support
<https://icu.unicode.org/contacts> mailing list, and/or please find/submit
error reports <https://icu.unicode.org/bugs>.

Please do not use this release candidate in production.

The preliminary API reference documents are published on
unicode-org.github.io/icu-docs/ – follow the “Dev” links there.

Best regards,

Markus Scherer for the ICU Project

[icu-announce] Unicode CLDR v43 Alpha available for testing

[Peter E. <pe...@un...>]

The Unicode CLDR v43 Alpha is now available for integration testing

CLDR provides key building blocks for software to support the world's languages (dates, times, numbers, sort-order, etc.). For example, all major browsers and all modern mobile phones use CLDR for language support. (See Who uses CLDR? <https://cldr.unicode.org/index#h.ozy52ypusfv4>)

Via the online Survey Tool, contributors supply data for their languages — data that is widely used to support much of the world’s software. This data is also a factor in determining which languages are supported on mobile phones and computer operating systems.

The Alpha has already been integrated into the development version of ICU. We would especially appreciate feedback from non-ICU consumers of CLDR data and on Migration <https://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-43#h.7s25aqdv767e> issues. Feedback can be filed at CLDR Tickets <https://github.com/unicode-org/cldr/blob/main/docs/requesting_changes.md>.

Alpha means that the main data and charts are available for review, but the specification, JSON data, and other components are not yet ready for review. Data may change if release-blocking bugs are found. The planned schedule is:
2023 Mar 15, Wed— public Beta (data)
2023 Mar 29, Wed — public Beta2 (data & spec)
2023 Apr 12, Wed — Release
CLDR 43 is a limited-submission release, focusing on just a few areas:
Formatting Person Names
Completing the data for formatting person names, allowing it to advance out of “tech preview”. For more information on the benefits of this feature, see Background <https://sites.google.com/unicode.org/cldr/index/downloads/cldr-42#h.xtb1v8tpviuc>. 
Adding substantially to the LikelySubtags data
This is used to find the likely writing system and country for a given language, used in normalizing locale identifiers and inheritance.
The data has been contributed by SIL <http://sil.org/>. 
Other data updates
Alternate names for Turkey / Türkiye
Name for the new timezone Ciudad Juárez
Structure
Adding some structure and data needed for ICU4X & JavaScript, for calendar eras and parentLocales. 
Cleanup of the inheritance structure in CLDR 
Collation & Searching
Treat various quote marks as equivalent at a Primary strength, also including Geresh and Gershayim. 

To find out more about these and other changes, see the draft CLDR v43 release page <https://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-43>, which has information on accessing the date, reviewing charts of the changes, and — importantly — Migration <https://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-43#h.7s25aqdv767e> issues.

Support Unicode
To support Unicode’s mission to ensure everyone can communicate in their languages across all devices, please consider adopting a character <https://unicodeaac.org/>, making a gift of stock <https://home.unicode.org/support-unicode/>, or making a donation <https://home.unicode.org/donation-page/>. As Unicode, Inc. is a US-based open source, open standards, non-profit, 501(c)3 organization, your contribution may be eligible for a tax deduction. Please consult with a tax advisor for details.

 <https://unicodeaac.org/>

[icu-announce] ICU 72 Released

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

We are pleased to announce the release of Unicode® ICU 72. It updates
to Unicode
15
<https://blog.unicode.org/2022/09/announcing-unicode-standard-version-150.html>,
and to CLDR 42
<https://blog.unicode.org/2022/10/unicode-cldr-v42-available.html> locale
data with various additions and corrections.

ICU 72 and CLDR 42 are major releases, including a new version of Unicode
and major locale data improvements.

ICU 72 adds two technology preview implementations based on draft Unicode
specifications:

   -

   Formatting of people’s names in multiple languages (CLDR background
   <https://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-42#h.nrv6xq99qe7d> on why
   this feature is being added and what it does)
   -

   An enhanced version of message formatting


This release also updates to the time zone data version 2022e (2022-oct).
Note that pre-1970 data for a number of time zones has been removed, as has
been the case in the upstream tzdata <https://www.iana.org/time-zones>
release since 2021b.

For details, please see https://icu.unicode.org/download/72.

Best regards,

Markus Scherer for the ICU Project

[icu-announce] ICU 72 Release Candidate available

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

We are pleased to announce the release candidate for Unicode® ICU 72. It
updates to Unicode 15
<https://blog.unicode.org/2022/09/announcing-unicode-standard-version-150.html>,
and to CLDR 42 <https://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-42> locale
data with various additions and corrections.

ICU 72 adds technology preview implementations for person name formatting,
as well as for a new version of message formatting based on a proposed
draft Unicode specification.

ICU 72 and CLDR 42 are major releases, including a new version of Unicode
and major locale data improvements.

ICU 72 updates to the time zone data version 2022b (2022-aug) which is
effectively the same as 2022c. Note that pre-1970 data for a number of time
zones has been removed, as has been the case in the upstream tzdata
<https://www.iana.org/time-zones> release since 2021b.

For details, please see https://icu.unicode.org/download/72.

Please test this release candidate on your platforms and report bugs and
regressions by Tuesday, 2022-oct-18, via the icu-support
<https://icu.unicode.org/contacts> mailing list, and/or please find/submit
error reports <https://icu.unicode.org/bugs>.

Please do not use this release candidate in production.

The preliminary API reference documents are published on
unicode-org.github.io/icu-docs/ – follow the “Dev” links there.

Best regards,

Markus Scherer for the ICU Project

[icu-announce] ICU 71 Released

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

We are pleased to announce the release of Unicode® ICU 71. It updates to CLDR
41 <https://blog.unicode.org/2022/04/unicode-cldr-version-41-released.html>
locale data with various additions and corrections.

ICU 71 adds phrase-based line breaking for Japanese. Existing line breaking
methods follow standards and conventions for body text but do not work well
for short Japanese text, such as in titles and headings. This new feature
is optimized for these use cases.

ICU 71 adds support for Hindi written in Latin letters (hi_Latn). The CLDR
data for this increasingly popular locale has been significantly revised
and expanded. Note that based on user expectations, hi_Latn incorporates a
large amount of English, and can also be referred to as “Hinglish”.

ICU 71 and CLDR 41 are minor releases, mostly focused on bug fixes and
small enhancements. (The fall CLDR/ICU releases will update to Unicode 15
which is planned for September.) We are also working to re-establish
continuous performance testing for ICU, and on development towards future
versions.

ICU 71 updates to the time zone data version 2022a. Note that pre-1970 data
for a number of time zones has been removed, as has been the case in the
upstream tzdata <https://www.iana.org/time-zones> release since 2021b.

For details, please see https://icu.unicode.org/download/71.

Best regards,

Markus Scherer for the ICU Project

[icu-announce] ICU 71 Release Candidate available

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

We are pleased to announce the release candidate for Unicode® ICU 71. It
updates to CLDR 41 <https://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-41>
locale data with various additions and corrections, and adds phrase-based
line breaking for Japanese. ICU 71 also includes a number of other bug
fixes and enhancements, and we are working to re-establish continuous
performance testing.

ICU 71 updates to the time zone data version 2022a. Note that pre-1970 data
for a number of time zones has been removed, as has been the case in the
upstream tzdata release since 2021b.

For details, please see https://icu.unicode.org/download/71.

Please test this release candidate on your platforms and report bugs and
regressions by Tuesday, 2022-apr-05, via the icu-support
<https://icu.unicode.org/contacts> mailing list, and/or please find/submit
error reports <https://icu.unicode.org/bugs>.

Please do not use this release candidate in production.

The preliminary API reference documents are published on
unicode-org.github.io/icu-docs/ – follow the “Dev” links there.

Best regards,

Markus Scherer for the ICU Project

[icu-announce] ICU 70 Released

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

We are pleased to announce the release of Unicode® ICU 70. It updates
to Unicode
14
<http://blog.unicode.org/2021/09/announcing-unicode-standard-version-140.html>,
including new characters, scripts, emoji, and corresponding API constants.
ICU 70 adds support for emoji properties of strings. It also updates to CLDR
40 <https://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-40> locale data with many
additions and corrections. ICU 70 also includes many other bug fixes and
enhancements, especially for measurement unit formatting, and it can now be
built and used with C++20 compilers.

For details, please see https://icu.unicode.org/download/70.

Note: Our website has moved. Please adjust your bookmarks.

Best regards,

Markus Scherer for the ICU Project

[icu-announce] ICU 70 Release Candidate available

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

We are pleased to announce the release candidate for Unicode® ICU 70. It
updates to Unicode 14
<http://blog.unicode.org/2021/09/announcing-unicode-standard-version-140.html>,
including new characters, scripts, emoji, and corresponding API constants.
ICU 70 adds support for emoji properties of strings. It also updates to CLDR
40 <https://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-40> locale data with many
additions and corrections. ICU 70 also includes many other bug fixes and
enhancements, especially for measurement unit formatting, and it can now be
built and used with C++20 compilers.

For details, please see https://icu.unicode.org/download/70.

Note: Our website has moved. Please adjust your bookmarks.

Please test this release candidate on your platforms and report bugs and
regressions by Tuesday, 2021-oct-19, via the icu-support
<https://icu.unicode.org/contacts> mailing list, and/or please find/submit
error reports <https://icu.unicode.org/bugs>.

Please do not use this release candidate in production.

The preliminary API reference documents are published on
unicode-org.github.io/icu-docs/ – follow the “Dev” links there.

Best regards,

Markus Scherer for the ICU Project

[icu-announce] ICU website(s) back & moved

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear ICU users,

You might have noticed that our website was down for a couple of days.
It's back with a new look & feel!

Part of this was a required move from "classic Google Sites" to "new Google
Sites". While we lost some text styling, the new version is more
mobile-friendly. Please let us know if you find something unreadable.

Also, we took the opportunity to move our main site to http*s*://icu.
*unicode.org*/ <https://icu.unicode.org/> -- a mere five years after moving
the project stewardship under the Unicode Consortium :-)

http://site.icu-project.org/ still works (well, works again) and now
redirects to the new location. We are still working on getting relative
page URLs to redirect 1:1 as well, so that old links don't always get you
to the homepage.
----
As you probably know, we had already moved the ICU User Guide to GitHub
pages under https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/

We had kept the old http://userguide.icu-project.org/ alive, with a link at
the top of each page pointing to the corresponding page on GitHub. The old
location is also now a redirect to a new Google Site, but we intend to
sunset this site in a few months.

Please pardon our dust and adjust your bookmarks.

Best regards,
Markus Scherer for the ICU-TC

[icu-announce] ICU 69 Released

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

We are pleased to announce the release of Unicode® ICU 69. It incorporates
updates to CLDR 39 <http://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-39> locale
data with its many additions and corrections. ICU 69 also includes
significant improvements to formatting for measurement units and numbers,
as well as many other bug fixes and enhancements.

For details, please see http://site.icu-project.org/download/69.

Best regards,

Markus Scherer for the ICU Project

[icu-announce] ICU 69 Release Candidate available

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

We are pleased to announce the release candidate for ICU 69. It updates to CLDR
39 <http://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-39> locale data with many
additions and corrections. ICU 69 also includes significant improvements
for measurement unit formatting and number formatting in general, as well
as many other bug fixes and enhancements.

For details, please see http://site.icu-project.org/download/69.

Please test this release candidate on your platforms and report bugs and
regressions by Tuesday, 2021-apr-06, via the icu-support
<https://sites.google.com/site/icusite/contacts> mailing list, and/or
please find/submit error reports
<https://sites.google.com/site/icusite/bugs>.

Please do not use this release candidate in production.

The preliminary API reference documents are published on
unicode-org.github.io/icu-docs/ – follow the “Dev” links there.

Best regards,

Markus Scherer for the ICU Project

[icu-announce] Unicode CLDR v39 Alpha available for testing

[Rick M. <ri...@un...>]

alpha imageThe Unicode CLDR v39 Alpha is now available for testing. The 
alpha has already been integrated into the development version of ICU. 
While the scope of the changes is small in this cycle, there are some 
significant migration issues, so we would especially appreciate feedback 
from non-ICU consumers of CLDR data. Feedback can be filed at CLDR 
Tickets <https://unicode-org.atlassian.net/projects/CLDR/>.

Unicode CLDR provides key building blocks for software supporting the 
world's languages. CLDR data is used by all major software systems 
<http://cldr.unicode.org/index#TOC-Who-uses-CLDR-> (including all mobile 
phones) for their software internationalization and localization, 
adapting software to the conventions of different languages.

CLDR v39 had no submission phase. Instead the focus was on modernizing 
the Survey Tool software, preparing for data submission in the next 
release (v40). The data fixes in the release were confined to some 
global changes that are too difficult to do during a submission cycle, 
and various other fixes. There was a major change in how Norwegian is 
handled, in order to align the way that the locale identifiers /no/, 
/nb/, and /nn/ are used. The CLDR Github repo is changing the name of 
“master” branch to “main” branch. The unit support from the last release 
was integrated into ICU, and some fixes resulting from that process were 
made to the measurement unit data. Quite a number of fixes are made to 
the specification, to clarify text or fix problems in keyboards, 
measurement units, locale identifiers, and a few other areas.

The public beta (data and specification) is planned for 2021-Mar-24, 
with the release following on 2021-Apr-07.

To find out more, see the draft CLDR 39 Release Note 
<http://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-39>, which has information 
on accessing the date, reviewing charts of the changes, and necessary 
migration changes.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
/Over 140,000 characters are available for adoption 
<http://unicode.org/consortium/adopt-a-character.html> to help the 
Unicode Consortium’s work on digitally disadvantaged languages/

[badge] <http://unicode.org/consortium/adopt-a-character.html>
http://blog.unicode.org/2021/03/unicode-cldr-v39-alpha-available-for.html

[icu-announce] ICU 68.2 Maintenance Release available

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

We are pleased to announce the ICU 68.2 maintenance release. It applies a
small number of bug fixes
<https://unicode-org.atlassian.net/issues/?jql=project%20%3D%20ICU%20AND%20status%20%3D%20Done%20AND%20resolution%20in%20(Fixed%2C%20%22Fixed%20by%20Other%20Ticket%22)%20AND%20fixVersion%20%3D%2068.2%20ORDER%20BY%20component%20ASC%2C%20created%20DESC>
to ICU 68, including the CLDR 38.1 maintenance release, but makes no API
changes.

For details, please see http://site.icu-project.org/download/68.

Best regards,

Markus Scherer for the ICU Project

[icu-announce] ICU users: Do you need ICU to work on EBCDIC platforms?

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear users of ICU,

*If you know what EBCDIC is, or what an IBM mainframe is, please read.
There are two important questions here.*

Short intro: A long time ago, we ported ICU4C to IBM mainframes (OS/390,
z/OS) and other native-EBCDIC platforms (OS/400, i5/OS). That is, we added
and used special code for ICU to compile and run on a machine where the
system charset (encoding, codepage) is in the EBCDIC family rather than
assuming the ASCII encoding of the "basic character set".


1. *Do you need ICU to work on EBCDIC platforms?*

2. If so, *can you provide* an engineer's *time* to fix EBCDIC porting
bugs, *and* provide resources for frequent (ideally continuous) *testing*?

*If no one needs this and/or if no one can help make it work and keep it
working, then we will probably remove the support code that makes this
possible.*

*Please respond by November 24 if you need EBCDIC and can help support it.*

ICU4C probably has not been tested on EBCDIC platforms at least since ICU 59
<http://site.icu-project.org/download/59> (2017-apr) moved to C++11. We do
not know if there are compilers for any of these platforms which support
enough of C++11 now for ICU4C to work. (We are also looking at when to move
to requiring C++14 or C++17.)

In other words, you may need to deal with C++ compiler issues as well.

As for EBCDIC, some of us with enough experience have been trying to keep
this portability aspect going by sheer attention in code reviews, but
mistakes are easy and bit rot is very likely. For example, assuming that
'a'==u'a', or that 'a'..'z' is one contiguous range of byte values, or that
'@' is always encoded with the same byte value (in codepages of the same
family).

Note: This has little to do with supporting character conversion for EBCDIC
codepages, which is supported regardless of which platform you build & run
ICU on. That conversion support just depends on the set of conversion table
data files that are included in ICU. It is possible (likely) that we will
reduce the set of such files included in ICU *by default*, but that set is
anyway customizable.


If we formally remove any attempt at supporting non-ASCII system charsets,
then we can simplify our code and make it easier to maintain, and easier to
contribute. Leaving behind platforms that lag extremely with compiler
support would help us, too.

Sincerely,
markus

[icu-announce] ICU 68 Released

[Yoshito U. <yos...@us...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

We are pleased to announce the release of Unicode® ICU 68. It updates to 
CLDR 38 locale data with many additions and corrections. ICU 68 brings 
support for locale-dependent smart unit preferences (road distance, 
temperature, etc.), implements locale ID canonicalization conformant with 
CLDR, and includes many other bug fixes and enhancements.

For details, please see http://site.icu-project.org/download/68.

Best regards,
Yoshito Umaoka for the ICU Project

[icu-announce] ICU Source Repository: Removing the "latest" git tag

[Jeff G. <jef...@gm...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

When the ICU source repository was migrated from Subversion (SVN) to git, a
"latest" tag was created, in order to match the equivalent "latest" tag
that existed in the SVN repo.

https://github.com/unicode-org/icu/releases/tag/latest

However, the creation of this tag was a mistake, as updating this tag
requires force-pushing to the public git repo, which modifies the history
of the repository.
Additionally, the current "latest" tag is 2 years out of date and points to
ICU 63.1, which was released in Oct 2018.

Since it is not possible to maintain a "latest" tag in a public git
repository without modifying history the "latest" tag will be deleted from
the public ICU source repository.

For users which used the "latest" tag to download and/or clone the most
up-to-date release (for example, in a build script), an alternative method
exists instead.
The following command line will clone the most current non pre-release
version of ICU from the public repository:

    git clone --depth 1 --branch `curl $1 -s -L -I -o /dev/null -w
'%{url_effective}' https://github.com/unicode-org/icu/releases/latest |
xargs basename` https://github.com/unicode-org/icu.git

This can be used as a direct replacement for cloning from the "latest" tag.

Best Regards,
Jeff Genovy for the ICU Project

[icu-announce] ICU 68 Release Candidate available

[Markus S. <mar...@gm...>]

Dear friends and users of ICU,

We are pleased to announce the release candidate for ICU 68. It updates to CLDR
38 <http://blog.unicode.org/2020/10/unicode-cldr-locale-data-v38-beta.html>
locale data with many additions and corrections. ICU 68 brings support for
locale-dependent smart unit preferences (road distance, temperature, etc.),
implements locale ID canonicalization conformant with CLDR, and includes
many other bug fixes and enhancements.

For details, please see http://site.icu-project.org/download/68.

Please test this release candidate on your platforms and report bugs and
regressions by Tuesday, 2020-oct-27.

Please do not use this release candidate in production.

The preliminary API reference documents are published on
unicode-org.github.io/icu-docs/ – follow the “Dev” links there.

Best regards,

Markus Scherer for the ICU Project