Web globalization and Unicode experts to meet in Washington, D.C.

 

SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 26, 2001 - Experts in text, internationalization, and Internet software will come to Washington D.C. on Jan. 28-31, for the 20th International Unicode Conference, to discuss the latest advances in their fields.

 

Recent developments in the World Wide Web will be covered in depth, including such topics as Security, XML Query, XML XForms, and Internet Domain Names. Panel sessions include experts from the World Wide Web consortium.

 

Neophytes to internationalization will also benefit from the many tutorials, sessions, and panels addressing the latest on distributed computing, HTML, XML, CSS, .NET, Java, C++ and C#.

 

This conference will address how major products rely on Unicode, including the newest releases of Microsoft Windows XP, IBM ICU, Microsoft Office, the .Net Framework, Oracle 9i, and others. Program details can be found at: http://www.unicode.org/iuc/iuc20.

 

Highlights of the conference include 2 keynote speakers, Tim Bray and Mohamed Muhsin:

 

Tim Bray is a co-inventor of XML (Extensible Markup Language) and founder and Chief Executive Officer of Antarcti.ca. Tim is widely recognized as an expert in Web architecture, information retrieval, and software optimization. In 1994 he introduced what would become one of the first commercial web Search Engines. In 1996, he joined the World Wide Web Consortium's XML Working Group, serving as co-editor of the Extensible Markup Language (XML 1.0) specification.

 

Mohamed Muhsin is Vice President and Chief Information Officer of the World Bank, one of the world's largest sources of development assistance. It works in more than 100 developing economies with the primary focus of helping the poorest people and the poorest countries. Mr. Muhsin is the Bank's senior spokesperson on information and technology management, including global telecommunications, videoconferencing, information management, and enterprise business systems. (http://www.worldbank.org)

 

Conference attendees will learn about the latest features of version 3.1 of the Unicode Standard, released earlier this year. The highlight of the new release is the addition of 44,946 new encoded characters, including over 40,000 new ideographs for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. This makes a grand total of 94,140 encoded characters in Unicode 3.1.

 

During Jan. 30-31, attendees can also view the latest products supporting Unicode demonstrated by exhibitors in the Conference Showcase.

 

The Unicode Standard has become the foundation for all modern text processing.  It is used on mainframes, PCs, portable devices, and for distributed processing across the Internet. The standard brings dramatic cost reductions to applications and enables the exchange of text in languages all over the world.

 

The conference is held every year in Silicon Valley in September, with additional conferences held at other locations around the world. The complete program and speaker biographies -- and registration information

-- can be found at: http://www.unicode.org/iuc/iuc20.

 

The following companies and organisations are sponsoring the conference:

 

Agfa/Monotype Corporation

Basis Technology Corporation

Microsoft Corporation

Netscape Communications

Oracle Corporation

Progress Software Corporation

Reuters Ltd.

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

 

 

THE UNICODE CONSORTIUM

 

The Unicode Consortium was founded as a non-profit organization in 1991. It is dedicated to the development, maintenance and promotion of The Unicode Standard, a worldwide character encoding.  The Unicode Standard encodes the characters of the world's principal scripts and languages, and is code-for-code identical to the international standard ISO/IEC 10646.  In addition to cooperating with ISO on the future development of ISO/IEC 10646, the Consortium is responsible for providing character properties and algorithms for use in implementations.

 

The membership base of the Unicode Consortium includes major computer corporations, governments, software producers, database vendors, research institutions, international agencies and various user groups:

 

Corporate Members

 

Adobe Systems, Apple Computer, Basis Technology, Government of Pakistan, Compaq Computer, Government of India, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Justsystems, Microsoft, NCR, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Progress Software, Research Libraries Group, Reuters Ltd., RWS Group, SAP, Sun Microsystems, Sybase, Trigeminal Software, Unisys.

 

Associate Members

 

Agfa/Monotype, Beijing Zhong Yi Electronics, BMC Software, Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Cable & Wireless HKT, CDAC, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Columbia University, DRA, DecoType, Endeavor, eNIC, Epixtech, Ericsson, Ex Libris, GlobalMentor, Government of Tamil Nadu, India, i-EMAIL.net, i-DNS.net International, Internet Mail Consortium, Innovative Interfaces, Langoo.com, Netscape Communications, Nokia, Nortel Networks, Novell, OCLC, Openwave, Optio Software, Palm, Production First Software, The Royal Library, Sweden, SAS Institute, Share, Siebel Systems, SIL International, SIRSI, SlangSoft, Software AG, Star TV, Symbian Ltd., Uniscape, Verisign Global Registry Services, VTLS, Walid, WordWalla, Yet Another Society.

 

For further information on the Unicode Standard, visit the Unicode Web site at http://www.unicode.org or e-mail <info@unicode.org>

 

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