Windows XP, released October 25, 2001, builds upon the international functionality of the Windows 2000 platform. Windows XP provides improved 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 User Interface (MUI) support.

The primary purpose of this paper is to outline the international support in Windows XP, describe this support within the historical context of Unicode on the Windows NT platform, discuss how language support is integrated into a single worldwide source, and finally, demonstrate that Unicode support is essential to building a fully globalized operating system. The trends in globalization in the next releases of Windows will also be discussed.