Unicode 9.0
 Logo of the Unicode Consortium
| |
| Alias(es) | Universal Coded Character Set (UCS) |
|---|---|
| Standard | Unicode Standard |
| Language(s) | International |
| Encoding formats |
UTF-8, UTF-16, GB18030 Less common: UTF-32, BOCU, SCSU |
| Preceded by | ISO 8859, various others. |
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium, and as of June 2018[update] the most recent version, Unicode 11.0, contains a repertoire of 137,439 characters covering 146 modern and historic scripts, as well as multiple symbol sets and emoji. The character repertoire of the Unicode Standard is synchronized with ISO/IEC 10646, and both are code-for-code identical.
The Unicode Standard consists of a set of code charts for visual reference, an encoding method and set of standard character encodings, a set of reference data files, and a number of related items, such as character properties, rules for normalization, decomposition, collation, rendering, and bidirectional display order (for the correct display of text containing both right-to-left scripts, such as Arabic and Hebrew, and left-to-right scripts).
Unicode's success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread and predominant use in the internationalization and localization of computer software. The standard has been implemented in many recent technologies, including modern operating systems, XML, Java (and other programming languages), and the .NET Framework.
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