Proposed Update UTS #46, Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing, Version 6.0.1

The Unicode Consortium has released a proposed update for UTS #46, Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing, Version 6.0.1. This update is intended to make it easier for implementations to both support IDNA2008, and use the mappings in UTS #46. Those mappings allow implementations to meet user expectations for handling uppercase and lowercase, and other character variants, and maintain compatibility with IDNA2003. The proposed data is found in: http://www.unicode.org/Public/idna/6.0.1/

The proposed draft does not change the UTS #46 status or mapping data for Unicode 6.0 characters; instead, it adds new informative fields to the data file and the conformance test file, fields that provide information as to which characters are allowed under IDNA2008. Because UTS #46 is targeted at client software such as browsers, the conformance tests do not check for the CONTEXTO conditions of IDNA2008, which are optional for client software.

Feedback on the proposed draft is welcome. Of particular interest are independent mechanical verification of the new field values, and feedback as to whether it would be useful to add checks for the CONTEXTO conditions to the conformance tests.

Details of the Public Review Issue are on the following web page:

http://www.unicode.org/review/

Review periods for the new items close on January 31, 2011.

If you have comments for official UTC consideration, please post them by submitting your comments through our feedback & reporting page:

http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html

If you wish to discuss issues on the Unicode mail list, then please use the following link to subscribe (if necessary). Please be aware that discussion comments on the Unicode mail list are not automatically recorded as input to the UTC. You must use the reporting link above to generate comments for UTC consideration.

http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html

Galley proofs for chapters 1-7 of the Unicode 6.0 Core Specification now online

Pre-publication versions of Chapters 1-7 of the Unicode Core Specification, Version 6.0, are now available for online viewing at http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode6.0.0/ . These pre-publication chapters are in the final copy editing stage and may have minor edits before the final version is published. The final version of the entire core specification will be published in February 2011.

Unicode Releases Common Locale Data Repository, Version 1.9

Mountain View, CA, December 1, 2010 - The Unicode® Consortium announced today the release of a new version of the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (Unicode CLDR 1.9), providing key building blocks for software to support the world's languages. The main features of CLDR 1.9 are enhanced collation and transliteration support, new structure, and modifications for data consistency. The details are found in the CLDR 1.9 Release Note (http://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-1-9).

Unicode CLDR is by far the largest and most extensive standard repository of locale data. This data is used by a wide spectrum of companies for their software internationalization and localization: adapting software to the conventions of different languages for such common software tasks as formatting of dates, times, time zones, numbers, and currency values; sorting text; choosing languages or countries by name; transliterating different alphabets; and many others. Unicode CLDR 1.9 is part of the Unicode locale data project, together with the Unicode Locale Data Markup Language (LDML: http://unicode.org/reports/tr35/). LDML is an XML format used for general interchange of locale data, such as in Microsoft's .NET.

For web pages with different views of CLDR data, see http://unicode.org/cldr/charts.html. For more information about the Unicode CLDR project (including charts) see http://cldr.unicode.org .