Unicode is a critical enabling technology for developers who want to internationalize applications for global environments. But, until now, developers have had to turn to standards documents for crucial information on utilizing Unicode. In Unicode Demystified, one of IBM's leading software internationalization experts covers every key aspect of Unicode development, offering practical examples and detailed guidance for integrating Unicode 3.0 into virtually any application or environment. Writing from a developer's point of view, Rich Gillam presents a systematic introduction to Unicode's goals, evolution, and key elements. Gillam illuminates the Unicode standards documents with insightful discussions of character properties, the Unicode character database, storage formats, character sequences, Unicode normalization, character encoding conversion, and more. He presents practical techniques for text processing, locating text boundaries, searching, sorting, rendering text, accepting user input, and other key development tasks. Along the way, he offers specific guidance on integrating Unicode with other technologies, including Java, JavaScript, XML, and the Web. For every developer building internationalized applications, internationalizing existing applications, or interfacing with systems that already utilize Unicode.

For every developer building internationalized applications, internationalizing existing applications, or interfacing with systems that already utilize Unicode.

"Rich has a clear, colloquial style that allows him to make even complex Unicode matters understandable. People dealing with Unicode will find this book a valuable resource."

--Dr. Mark Davis, President, The Unicode Consortium

As the software marketplace becomes more global in scope, programmers are recognizing the importance of the Unicode standard for engineering robust software that works across multiple regions, countries, languages, alphabets, and scripts. Unicode Demystified offers an in-depth introduction to the encoding standard and provides the tools and techniques necessary to create today's globally interoperable software systems.

An ideal complement to specifics found in The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0 (Addison-Wesley, 2000), this practical guidebook brings the "big picture" of Unicode into practical focus for the day-to-day programmer and the internationalization specialist alike. Beginning with a structural overview of the standard and a discussion of its heritage and motivations, the book then shifts focus to the various writing systems represented by Unicode--along with the challenges associated with each. From there, the book looks at Unicode in action and presents strategies for implementing various aspects of the standard.

Topics covered include:

• The basics of Unicode--what it is and what it isn't
• The history and development of character encoding
• The architecture and salient features of Unicode, including character properties, normalization forms, and storage and serialization formats
• The character repertoire: scripts of Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and more, plus numbers, punctuation, symbols, and special characters
• Implementation techniques: conversions, searching and sorting, rendering, and editing
• Using Unicode with the Internet, programming languages, and operating systems

With this book as a guide, programmers now have the tools necessary to understand, create, and deploy dynamic software systems across today's increasingly global marketplace.

Richard Gillam is a senior development engineer at Trilogy, a leading developer of large-enterprise e-commerce solutions. He is a former member of IBM's Globalization Center of Competency, where he was one of the original designers of the open-source International Components for Unicode and was responsible for several of the international frameworks in the Java Class Libraries. Rich is a former columnist for C++ Report, a regular presenter at the International Unicode Conferences, and a Specialist Member of the Unicode Consortium.