Unicode, Inc.
CONTACT: Tim Helms/Kelli
Ramirez
The
Benjamin Group Inc.
408/988-8933
For Immediate Release
MAJOR COMPUTER COMPANIES JOIN TO PROMOTE
WORLDWIDE STANDARD CHARACTER ENCODING
MOUNTAIN
VIEW,
Unicode simplifies the development of
international information systems through a single uniform character standard.
Unicode encompasses all major languages and offers a strong foundation for
international systems. This standard will make multilingual software easier to
write, information systems easier to manage and international information
exchange more practical.
An informal Unicode working group, the
predecessor of the incorporated consortium, has completed a review draft of the
Unicode standard containing more than 27,000 characters. This draft is currently
being reviewed by hundreds of individuals, companies and institutions.
The consortium welcomes additional
corporations interested in contributing to Unicode’s design, implementation and
maintenance to join the consortium and place representatives on the Unicode
Technical Committee.
Global
Communications Influence Unicode Developers
“The Unicode standard evolved from the
industry’s need for a 16-bit version of ASCII,” said Joe Becker, a principal
scientist at Xerox and a Unicode Inc. technical vice president. “Information
professionals gathered together to take the best from existing standards and
apply their multilingual software experience to designing a simple, complete
character encoding.”
The Unicode project was initiated in
early 1989 by an informal working group of linguists, engineers, managers and
information professionals from companies and institutions requiring
international information systems. The group consulted with language experts
and members of national and international organizations, and determined the
most effective way to achieve an international standard with the same level of
simplicity and efficiency as ASCII was to establish Unicode as an
inter-company, international character standard. The consortium will also
propose that Unicode be adopted by national standards organizations.
Major contributors to Unicode’s
development include Apple, Xerox, Metaphor, GO, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems,
IBM, The Research Libraries Group and NeXT. Aldus,
Lotus and Novell have recently taken active roles in the development of
Unicode.
Character
Structure
Unicode character codes are
fixed-width, unambiguous and sufficiently numerous to include all characters
likely to be used in electronic information processing. They are fixed-width to
minimize complexity; 16-bits wide because this provides a sufficient number of
codes (65,536) to represent electronic text characters anticipated for the
foreseeable future; and unambiguous because each character has one code,
regardless of the language using it or the font rendering it.
The codes are grouped by linguistic
and functional categories. Within categories, and whenever possible, principles
used in earlier international standards are followed.
Current
Activity
After the final draft review, completion
of Unicode version 1.0 is planned for spring 1991. The consortium is actively
adding corporations to its membership and representatives to the Technical
Committee.
Besides developing the standard, the
group has worked to insure mutual convertibility between Unicode and existing
national, international and inter-company encoding standards. The group has
compiled a database of cross-conversion tables between Unicode and many other
existing character encoding standards which will be available through Unicode
Inc.
Board
of Directors
Elected to the Unicode Inc. board of
directors and serving as its key advisers are some of the industry’s leading
visionaries:
Larry Tesler, Vice
President Advanced Products, Apple Computer, Inc.
Robert Carr, Vice President Software
Development, GO Corp.
Richard J. Holleman,
Director of Telecommunications, IBM Corp.
Charles Irby, Vice President of
Development, Metaphor Computer Systems
Paul Maritz, Vice
President Advanced Operating Systems, Microsoft Corporation
Bud Tribble, Vice
President Software Engineering, NeXT Computer Inc.
Jay Israel, Vice President Advanced
Technology, Novell, Inc.
David Richards, Director of Development, The Research Libraries Group.
John Gage, Vice President Desktop Development,
Sun Microsystems Inc.
Unicode Information
For more information regarding the
Unicode standard character encoding or Unicode Inc., contact Tim Helms or Kelli Ramirez at The Benjamin Group Inc., phone
408/988-8933, fax 408/988-0831.