[A12n-forum] Unicode Releases Common Locale Data Repository, Ver. 1.5

["Don Osborn" <dzo@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

FYI (fwd from the Unicode & CLDR-users lists)...


Unicode Releases Common Locale Data Repository, Version 1.5

Mountain View, CA, July 31, 2007 - The UnicodeR Consortium announced today
the release of the new version of the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository
(Unicode CLDR 1.5), providing key building blocks for software to support
the world's languages. Unicode CLDR is by far the largest and most extensive
standard repository of locale data. This data is used by a wide spectrum of
companies for their software internationalization and localization: adapting
software to the conventions of different languages for such common software
tasks as formatting of dates, times, time zones, numbers, and currency
values; sorting text; choosing languages or countries by name;
transliterating different alphabets; and many others.

CLDR 1.5 contains data for 135 languages and 149 territories: 394 locales in
all. Version 1.5 of the repository contains over 42% more locale data than
the previous release,  with over 27,000 new or modified data items entered
by over 160 different contributors. New to this release are also BGN
transliterations. Major contributors to CLDR 1.5 include Adobe, Apple,
Google, IBM, Sun, and official representatives from a number of countries.
Many other organizations and volunteers around the globe have also made
important contributions.

Unicode CLDR 1.5 is part of the Unicode locale data project, together with
Unicode Locale Data Markup Language (Unicode LDML 1.5). LDML is an XML
format used for general interchange of locale data, such as in Microsoft's
.NET. Major features of Unicode LDML 1.5 include new conformance clauses,
commonly used time zone translations, revisions for handling bidirectional
text (Arabic and Hebrew), language fallbacks, revisions for character
fallbacks (used for legacy character encodings), mappings to related
language and country codes, and substantial data on language and script
usage in different countries.

Organizations and volunteers contribute locale data through the CLDR survey
tool. Major improvements to the tool include: enhancements of the
appearance, layout, and operation, substantial new documentation, improved
testing, new levels of approval and corresponding changes to the voting
process for lesser-known languages, and translator forums.

For more information about the Unicode CLDR project (including charts) see
http://unicode.org/cldr/<http://www.unicode.org/cldr/>. The latest features
of CLDR will also be showcased at the 31st Internationalization and Unicode
Conference (IUC) on October 15-17, 2007 in San Jose, CA - see
http://unicodeconference.org/<http://www.unicodeconference.org/>.

About the Unicode Consortium

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop,
extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard and related globalization
standards. The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum of
corporations and organizations in the computer and information processing
industry: Adobe Systems, Apple, Basis Technology, DENIC eG, Google,
Government of India, Government of Pakistan, Government of Tamil Nadu, HP,
IBM, Justsystem, Microsoft, Monotype Imaging, Oracle, SAP, Sun Microsystems,
Sybase, UC Berkeley, Yahoo!, plus well over a hundred Associate, Liaison,
and Individual members.

For more information, please contact the Unicode Consortium
(http://unicode.org/<http://www.unicode.org/>).