The Unicode Consortion has released Version 4.0. For those not familiar with it, Unicode is "the fundamental specification for the representation of text, at the core of all modern software, programming languages, and standards, including Windows, Java, C#, Perl, XML, HTML, DB2, Oracle, and many others."
How is Version 4.0 better than previous versions? Here's what the press release says:
Version 4.0 encodes over 96,000 characters, twice as many as Version 3.0,
and includes two record-breaking collections of encoded characters. The
largest encoded character collection for Chinese characters in the history
of computing has doubled in size yet again to encompass over 2000 years of
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese literary usage, including all the
main classical dictionaries of these languages. Version 4.0 also encodes
the largest set of characters for mathematical and technical publishing in
existence.
Unicode is a remarkable achievement. I highly recommend taking a few moments to visit the Web site: www.unicode.org.
John Yunker is founder of 
