by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2007/06/10 16:45 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2007/06/10/3212793.aspx
From time to time I am asked explain the differences between ISO's 10646 and Unicode, though I was relieved to see that I would now always have a place to point people to. :-)
Andrew West and his post Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646 from the beginning of last week give a wonderful overview to the two standards, the way that synchronization between them happens, and even a bit about that processes nd schedules that run within both of them. He even ends with a bit about what is currently under ballot (ISO-speak for pending)....
And then, to topped it off with another post at the end of last week entitled What's new in Unicode 5.1? which has a good review of what is coming in the next version, a version that, depending on the timing of the standard and of Microsoft, may or may not represent the bulk of the additions that would show up in the next version of Windows (I do not know enough about the dates on either side of this to even guess whether there will be another version to pick up or not, to tell you the truth -- y'all can gossip amongst yourselves now).
In any case, he also has a cool table of scripts within Unicode in that second post that is definitely worth looking at. Thanks, Andrew!
In an upcoming post I'll talk a bit about the ISO standard that almost was, the thing we might all have ti contend with had they and Unicode not gotten together as they did....
This post brought to you by ᦀ (U+1980, a.k.a. NEW TAI LUE LETTER HIGH QA)
Andrew West on 11 Jun 2007 5:23 AM:
Thanks for the plug ... my reader stats really spiked overnight.
As my post was very much process oriented, what I didn't discuss was the difference in content between the two standards, and how Unicode gives you so much added value with the various character properties that it defines. 10646 does little more than define a character repertoire, and you can't use those characters in any meaningful way without reference to their Unicode properties.
Michael S. Kaplan on 11 Jun 2007 8:32 AM:
The principal advantage to blogs (and the third axiom of blogging) -- there is always another post! :-)