Version 4.1 of the Unicode® Standard Released
Mountain View, CA, March 31, 2005 - The Unicode® Consortium
announced today the release of the latest version of the Unicode
Standard, Version 4.1.0. This version adds 1,273 new characters,
including those necessary to complete roundtrip mapping of the HKSCS
and GB 18030 standards, five new currency signs, some characters for
Indic and Korean, and eight new scripts. In addition, there have
been a number of significant additions and changes to the Unicode
Character Database properties, which determine the behavior of
characters in modern software.
Unicode 4.1 adds two new Unicode Standard Annexes:
UAX #31:
Identifier and Pattern Syntax and
UAX #34: Unicode Named Character
Sequences, and makes significant changes to other Unicode Standard
Annexes. UAX #31 is of particular interest as a result of the
broader incorporation of Unicode in protocols and programming
languages. Applications from programming languages to international
domain names require stable mechanisms for distinguishing both
identifiers and syntax characters, even as characters for additional
languages are added to the Unicode Standard.
The release of Unicode 4.1 will be soon followed by a new release of
the Unicode Collation Algorithm, for language-sensitive sorting,
searching, and matching; by Unicode Regular Expressions, setting the
standard for handling Unicode character in regular expressions; and
by a new draft of Unicode Security Considerations, for dealing with
security issues posed by the large number of visually-similar
characters in Unicode.
For complete details on Unicode 4.1, see
http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.1.0/. Those interested in the latest developments in software
globalization can attend the next Unicode conference, April 6-8,
2005 in Berlin, Germany.
About the Unicode Standard
The Unicode Standard is a fundamental component of all modern
software and information technology protocols. It provides a
uniform, universal architecture and encoding for all languages of
the world -- with over 96,000 characters currently encoded -- and is
the basis for processing, storage, and seamless data interchange of
text data worldwide. Unicode is required by modern standards such as
XML, Java, C#, ECMAScript (JavaScript), LDAP, CORBA 3.0, WML, IDN,
etc., and is the official way to implement ISO/IEC 10646.
About the Unicode Consortium
The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to
develop, extend and promote software globalization. The membership
of the consortium represents a broad spectrum of corporations and
organizations in the computer and information processing industry.
Full members (the highest level) are: Adobe Systems, L'Agence
intergouvernementale de la Francophonie, Apple Computer, Government
of India - Ministry of Information Technology, Government of
Pakistan - National Language Authority, HP, IBM, Justsystem,
Microsoft, Monotype Imaging, Oracle, RLG, SAP, Sun Microsystems, and
Sybase. In addition, there are about 100 Supporting, Associate,
Liaison, and Individual members.
For more information, please contact the Unicode Consortium
http://www.unicode.org
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