Unicode 9.0 release planned for mid-2016
After last year's update, another update was planned for summer 2016. We took this as an opportunity to review the Unicode standard in more detail. The non-profit Unicode Consortium is responsible for continuously developing and extending the Unicode standard.
What is Unicode?
Because computers work with numbers, every letter and symbol is mapped to a numeric value (digital code). A core advantage of Unicode is that it ended the earlier fragmentation across hundreds of incompatible encoding systems. Each character receives its own unique number, independent of system, software, or language. Unicode is a foundational requirement for technologies such as XML, Java, ECMAScript (JavaScript), LDAP, CORBA 3.0, and WML.
International standard ISO/IEC 10646
Due to its broad global acceptance, Unicode is used in most operating systems and browsers and has become essential in software and technology.
Advantages:
- Cost savings
- Programs and websites can be used across many systems, languages, and countries with minimal adaptation
- Unicode enables international text exchange with low information loss
Current version at the time: Unicode 8.0
The standard was last published in a new version in summer 2015. The update included:
- Lowercase letters of the Cherokee alphabet
- 5,771 additional CJK characters and 41 additional emoji (including faces, hands, food, sports, animals, and religion)
- Currency symbol for the Georgian lari
- Numeric forms for the duodecimal system
- Characters for Icetot
- Ahom script
- Anatolian Hieroglyphs
- Hatran script
- Old Hungarian script
- Multani script
- SignWriting