The next release of Windows, codenamed "Whistler", builds upon the international functionality of the Windows 2000 platform. Currently in beta, Whistler provides new globalization features related to Unicode such as support for new scripts, languages and locales, a wider variety of input locales and rendering features, enhanced support for surrogates and improved Multilingual UI (MUI) support.

The primary purpose of this paper is to outline the new international support in Whistler, discuss how language support is integrated into a single worldwide binary and demonstrate that Unicode support is essential to building a fully globalized operating system. The paper will conclude with a discussion of the Windows Text Services Framework, a new system framework enabling advanced text input and natural language technologies such as speech dictation, handwriting recognition and keyboard front end processors.