About the Unicode® Standard
Characters for the World
The Unicode Standard is a character coding system
designed to support the worldwide interchange, processing, and
display of the written texts of the diverse languages and technical
disciplines of the modern world. In addition, it supports classical
and historical texts of many written languages.
Formally, a version of the Unicode Standard is defined by an edition of
the core specification, The Unicode Standard, together with the
Code
Charts, Unicode Standard
Annexes and the Unicode
Character Database.
The detailed breakdown of the contents of each version are
given on
Archive of Unicode Versions.
See also a summary of version information in
About Versions.
Latest Version
The documentation for the latest version of the Unicode Standard can always be found at:
http://www.unicode.org/versions/latest/
Beta Review
Periodically, drafts of new versions of the Unicode Standard, including the Unicode Character Database and UAXes, are available
for beta review and public feedback. Consult the
beta testing
page to see if a beta version of the Unicode Standard is available.
Maintenance
The Unicode Standard is maintained by the
Unicode Technical Committee.
For up-to-the minute information, please see Updates and Errata. The
lists of Proposed New Characters,
and Proposed New Scripts give
the latest information available on pending future extensions to the
character repertoire of the Unicode Standard.
More Information
Where is my Character? offers
suggestions on how to find a character encoded in the Unicode Standard.
There is also a Unicode Glossary and a
list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). The
Guide to Unicode Tutorials provides
a summary of useful overviews and tutorials about the Unicode
Standard. That is a good place to start for general information
about how the standard works. There is also a short
Technical Introduction. A
number of Technical Reports provide
additional specifications.
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