[Indic-computing-devel] Major Enhancements to the Unicode Standard: Enabling International Domain Names, Expanding Worldwide Accessibility, and Reducing the Digital Divide

[<kut...@ya...>]

Hello Everyone,

I hope all of us will use this major step forward and
start building some real Indic web-applications.

Regards,
Abhijit Dutta

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


Major Enhancements to the Unicode Standard:
Enabling International Domain Names, Expanding
Worldwide Accessibility, 
and
Reducing the Digital Divide

Mountain View, CA, August 27, 2003 -- The Unicode®
Consortium and
Addison-Wesley announce publication of Version 4.0 of
the Unicode 
Standard.
Unicode is the fundamental specification for the
representation of 
text, at
the core of all modern software, programming
languages, and standards,
including Windows, Java, C#, Perl, XML, HTML, DB2,
Oracle, and many 
others.


Unicode is also central to the new internationalized
domain names, 
which
allow everyone in the world to have URLs in their own
languages. This 
is
yet another case where Unicode opens the door to more
of the world's
different cultures, helping to break down the digital
divide.

Version 4.0 strengthens Unicode support for worldwide
communication,
software availability, and publishing. The text has
been extensively
rewritten, and incorporates specifications that were
previously only
available as separate documents. The clarified
specification of 
conformance
requirements incorporates the most highly developed
character encoding
model in existence, encompassing the wide variety of
types of 
characters
needed by the world's languages, and permitting
compatibility with all
modern computer architectures.

Record-breaking character content

Version 4.0 encodes over 96,000 characters, twice as
many as Version 
3.0,
and includes two record-breaking collections of
encoded characters. The
largest encoded character collection for Chinese
characters in the 
history
of computing has doubled in size yet again to
encompass over 2000 years 
of
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese literary
usage, including all 
the
main classical dictionaries of these languages.
Version 4.0 also 
encodes
the largest set of characters for mathematical and
technical publishing 
in
existence. The character repertoires of Version 4.0
and International
Standard ISO/IEC 10646 are fully synchronized.

Reducing the digital divide

To meet the needs of all linguistic communities, the
Unicode Standard 
and
associated standards are continually being extended,
not only in terms 
of
the addition of characters, but also in specifying
*how* those 
characters
work, such as:

- how text sorts or matches in different languages
- how text behaves for East Asian languages (e.g.
vertically) or in 
Middle
Eastern languages (from right to left)
- how text should upper- or lowercase
- how text breaks into lines or words
- how text behaves in Regular Expressions (a key tool
used in a vast 
number
of web servers)

Small linguistic communities all over the world have
the opportunity to 
get
mainstream software working right out of the box,
instead of waiting 
years
for special adaptations that may never come.

For more information on the scripts encoded in the
Unicode Standard, 
see
http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.0.0/

Version 4.0 is published by Addison-Wesley (ISBN
0-321-18578-1), and is
available from the Unicode Consortium or through the
book trade. The 
text
and code charts of Version 4.0 are also available on
the Consortium's 
Web
site www.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, which
specifies the
representation of text in modern software products and
standards.

Members of the Consortium are a broad spectrum of
corporations and
organizations in the computer and information
technology industry. Full
members are: Adobe Systems, Apple Computer, Basis
Technology, 
Government of
India (Ministry of Information Technology), Government
of Pakistan
(National Language Authority), HP, IBM, Justsystem,
Microsoft, Oracle,
PeopleSoft, RLG, SAP, Sun Microsystems, and Sybase.

Membership in the Unicode Consortium is open to
organizations and
individuals anywhere in the world who support the
Unicode Standard and 
wish
to assist in its extension and implementation.

For additional information on Unicode, contact the
Unicode Consortium,
650-693-3921

For more information on The Unicode Standard, Version
4.0, see:
http://www.awprofessional.com/titles/0321185781

________________________________________________________________________
Yahoo! India Promos: Win TVs, Bikes, DVD players & more!
Go to http://in.promos.yahoo.com