Unicode Version 5.0 Pre-orders Now Accepted

Mountain View, CA, September 18, 2006 -- The Unicode® Consortium announces that pre-orders of the long-awaited Version 5.0 of the Unicode Standard can be made now through the Unicode Consortium's website. As a special introductory offer, The Unicode Guide -- the handy tri-fold developer's reference guide -- will be included with the Version 5.0 book at a combined price of $40.00 for both. This offer will expire on October 15, 2006.

Published in a lighter, smaller size, Version 5.0 also includes for the first time the Unicode Standard Annexes, which specify key processes for ensuring reliable text interchange between programs and on the web.

Based on fifteen years of experience, this new version is a major update which supersedes and obsoletes all previous versions of the standard. It has hundreds of pages of new material and hundreds more of revised material, including significant revisions to text, figures, tables, definitions, and conformance clauses – improving clarity and providing practical guidance. "Hardcopy versions of the Unicode Standard have been among the most crucial and most-heavily used reference books in my personal library for years," said Donald E. Knuth, Professor Emeritus of The Art of Computer Programming, Stanford University. "Unicode allows me to celebrate the fact that computer science is a vast worldwide collaboration." For more acclaim from industry notables, see http://www.unicode.org/press/quotations.html.

Unicode Version 5.0 has become the basis for Microsoft's Vista generation of operating systems, and is included in upgrade plans for Google, Yahoo!, and ICU, to name but a few. This comprehensive and official Unicode reference manual is the one book all developers using Unicode must have. See the Unicode Consortium's website at http://www.unicode.org/book/aboutbook.html for all the details.

The latest features of Unicode Version 5.0 will be showcased at the 30th Internationalization and Unicode Conference (IUC) from November 17-19, 2006 in Washington, D.C.

About The Unicode Consortium

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard and related globalization standards.

The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum of corporations and organizations in the computer and information processing industry. Members are: Adobe Systems, Apple Computer, Basis Technology, Denic e.G., Google, Government of India, Government of Pakistan, HP, IBM, Justsystems, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Sun Microsystems, Sybase, The University of California at Berkeley, Yahoo! plus well over a hundred Associate, Liaison, and Individual members.

For more information, please contact the Unicode Consortium.