Excerpts from the Preface:

This book, The Unicode Standard, Version 5.0, together with the Unicode Character Database, is the authoritative source of information on Version 5.0 of the Unicode character encoding standard.

Version 5.0 of the standard is a significant departure from prior versions. It lays out much clearer requirements for supporting Unicode and provides more explicit guidance for implementers to quickly embrace the proliferation of new growth technologies and emerging markets while at the same time meeting users’ needs for secure, robust software.

Why Buy This Book:

In a major enhancement, Version 5.0 of the Unicode Standard is now available in a smaller, more convenient size while including much more textual content. Most notably, for the first time the book includes all of the Unicode Standard Annexes, which provide specifications for vital processes such as text normalization, bidirectional handling, and identifier parsing.

Version 5.0 contains the knowledge gained from many years of worldwide implementation experience and has been enhanced significantly: the text incorporates 15 years of user feedback, provides thorough answers to the many questions users of Unicode have raised, and is much more accessible—with greatly improved figures and tables, and with the text revised for clarity.

In addition, the text of Version 5.0 reflects advances in the computer implementation of writing systems. It substantially improves the descriptions of rendering Indic scripts to meet the demands of this area of growing market importance—Unicode-based implementations are supported by the government of India, and this book explains how to build them. Version 5.0 also highlights the newly established core CJK subset of characters, IICore, which is critical for rendering and interoperability in the East Asian market.

In short, The Unicode Standard, Version 5.0, enables developers to implement quickly the latest advances for worldwide software users while opening new opportunities in highgrowth markets. The changes from Versions 3.0 and 4.0 to Version 5.0 are major and important—this is the one book all Unicode implementers must have.