The Unicode Consortium has announced the release of Version 6.1 of the Unicode Standard, continuing Unicode’s long-term commitment to support the full diversity of languages around the world. This latest version adds characters to support additional languages of China, other Asian countries, and Africa. It also addresses educational needs in the Arabic-speaking world. A total of 732 new characters have been added.

This version of the Standard also brings technical improvements to support implementers. Improved changes to property values and their aliases mean that properties now have easy-to-specify labels. The new labels combined with a new script extensions property means that regular expressions can be more straightforward and are easier to validate.

Over 200 new Standardized Variants have been added for emoji characters, allowing implementations to distinguish preferred display styles between text and emoji styles. For example:

Among the notable property changes and additions in Unicode 6.1 are two new line break property values, which improve the line-breaking behavior of Hebrew and Japanese text. Segmentation behavior was also improved for Thai, Lao, and similar languages.

Two other important Unicode specifications are maintained in synchrony with the Unicode Standard, and have updates for Version 6.1. These will be finalized in February:

UTS #10, Unicode Collation Algorithm
UTS #46, Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing

The W3C TAG is pleased to announce the publication of a new TAG Finding " Identifying Application State."

URIs were originally used primarily to identify documents on the Web, or with the use of fragment identifiers, portions of those documents. As Web content has evolved to include Javascript and similar applications that have extensive client-side logic, a need has arisen to use URIs to identify states of such applications, to provide for bookmarking and linking those states, etc. This finding sets out some of the challenges of using URIs to identify application states, and recommends some best practices. A more formal introduction to the Finding and its scope can be found in its abstract.

The W3C TAG would like to thank Ashok Malhotra, who did much of the analysis and editing for this work, and also former TAG member T.V. Raman, who first brought this issue to the TAG's attention, and who wrote earlier drafts on which this finding is based.

Video recordings of speakersat the MultilingualWeb workshop in Limerick are now available, in addition to the previously uploaded slides and IRC notes.

Entitled “A Local Focus for the Multilingual Web”, the workshop surveyed and shared information about currently available best practices and standards that can help content creators and localizers address the needs of the multilingual Web, including the Semantic Web. Attendees also heard about gaps that need to be addressed, and enjoyed opportunities to network and share information between the various different communities involved in enabling the multilingual Web. The second day was given over to an Open Space discussion with breakouts.

Work is under way on a summary report for the workshop, which will be announced in due course.

Building on the success of the Madrid, Pisa and Limerick workshops, preparations have now begun for the next workshop, to be held in Luxembourg, at the European Commission, in March 2012. See the Call for Participation.

Thanks to VideoLectures for hosting the videos.

15 – 16 March 2012, Luxembourg. Co-located with the European Commission’s Language Technology Showcase Days, and hosted by the Directorate-General for Translation (DGT) of the European Commission.

The MultilingualWeb projectis looking at best practices and standards related to all aspects of creating, localizing and deploying the Web multilingually. The project aims to raise the visibility of existing best practices and standards and identify gaps. The core vehicle for this is a series of four events which are planned over two years.

After three highly successful workshops in Madrid, Pisa, and Limerick, this final workshop in the series will continue to investigate currently available best practices and standards aimed at helping content creators, localizers, tools developers, and others meet the challenges of the multilingual Web.

Participation is free. We welcome participation from both speakers and non-speaking attendees. For more information, see the Call for Participation

The MultilingualWeb Workshop in Limerickwas once more a success, thanks to the efforts of the excellent speakers and the local organizers, but also thanks this time to the participants themselves who enthusiastically took part in the Open Space discussion organized by TAUS. This will hopefully lead to some longer term initiatives, and most groups are already planning to continue their discussions in Luxembourg, next Spring. We had around 90 attendees.

The program pagehas now been updated to point to speakers’ slides and to the relevant parts of the IRC logs. Links to video recordings will follow shortly.

There will also be a page pointing to social media reports, such as blog posts, tweets and photos, related to the workshop. If you have any blog posts, photos, etc. online, please let Richard Ishida know (ishida@w3.org) so that we can link to them from this page.

A summary report of the workshop will follow a little later.

Register nowif you want to ensure that you get a place.

Participation in the workshop is free, but spaces are limited. We have another great programin place.

The keynote speaker will be Daniel Glazman, of Disruptive Innovations, and co-chair of the W3C CSS Working Group. He is followed by a strong line up in sessions entitled Developers, Creators, Localizers, Machines, Users, and Policy. On the morning of the second day Jaap van der Meer of TAUS will facilitate “Open Space” style discussion sessions, where workshop participants themselves will choose topics to discuss in several breakout groups.

There will be a dinner reception on the evening of 21 September (free of charge, workshop registrants only).

The MultilingualWeb workshops, funded by the European Commission and coordinated by the W3C, look at best practices and standards related to all aspects of creating, localizing and deploying the multilingual Web. The workshops are successful because they attracted a wide range of participants, from fields such as localization, language technology, browser development, content authoring and tool development, etc., to create a holistic view of the interoperability needs of the multilingual Web.

This workshop is co-located with the 16th Annual LRC Conference, and hosted by the LRC (Language Research Centre) and the University of Limerick.

We look forward to seeing you in Limerick!

An initial program has been published for the upcoming W3C MultilingualWeb workshop in Limerick, Ireland, 21-22 September 2011. (Co-located with the 16th Annual LRC Conference.)

The keynote speaker will be Daniel Glazman, of Disruptive Innovations, and co-chair of the W3C CSS Working Group. He is followed by a strong line up in sessions entitled Developers, Creators, Localizers, Machines, Users, and Policy.

See the Call for Participationfor details about how to register for the workshop. Participation in the workshop is free.

The MultilingualWeb workshops, funded by the European Commission and coordinated by the W3C, look at best practices and standards related to all aspects of creating, localizing and deploying the multilingual Web. The workshops are successful because they attracted a wide range of participants, from fields such as localization, language technology, browser development, content authoring and tool development, etc., to create a holistic view of the interoperability needs of the multilingual Web.

We look forward to seeing you in Limerick!

An updated version of Working with Time Zoneshas just been published as a Working Group Note.

Date and time values can be complex and the relationship between computer and human timekeeping systems can lead to problems. The working group has updated this version to contain more comprehensive guidelines and best practices for working with time and time zones in applications and document formats. Use cases are provided to help choose an approach that ensures that geographically distributed applications work well. This document also aims to provide a basic understanding and vocabulary for talking about time and time handling in software.

Editor: Addison Phillips, Lab126.

This is reminder to register for the upcoming W3C MultilingualWeb workshop in Limerick, Ireland, 21-22 September 2011. (Co-located with the 16th Annual LRC Conference.)

See the Call for Participationfor details about how to register for the workshop and propose a talk. Participation in the workshop is free.

The MultilingualWeb workshops, funded by the European Commission and coordinated by the W3C, look at best practices and standards related to all aspects of creating, localizing and deploying the multilingual Web. The workshops are successful because they attracted a wide range of participants, from fields such as localization, language technology, browser development, content authoring and tool development, etc., to create a holistic view of the interoperability needs of the multilingual Web.

We look forward to seeing you in Limerick!