Version 5.2 of the Unicode Collation Algorithm has been released. This version resynchronizes the Unicode Collation Algorithm with all
of the updates for the Unicode Standard, Version 5.2.

The rest of this post is taken from the Unicode Consortium’s release notification and details changes and issues for implementations.

• The text of UTS #10 has been updated. Among other changes, the revised text for UTS #10 makes it clear that the BASE for implicit generation of weights for Han characters does not include unassigned code points.
• There are small changes in Gujarati, Telugu, Malayalam (including weighting for chillus), Tamil, and Sinhala. While these changes move in the direction of expected behavior, good results will only come from tailoring for particular languages, such as with CLDR.
• There have been significant changes to the ordering of many combining marks. Many combining marks that are not in customary use in modern languages now have the same secondary weight, and will only be distinguished on a fourth level, by code point ordering. This can be seen by looking at the Unicode Collation Charts (http://unicode.org/charts/collation/). In 5.2, many characters now have a white background, indicating that they sort exactly the same as the previous character, unless a 4th (codepoint) level is used.
• Implementations of UCA should take note that the increased number of characters may cause overflows if the implementing code makes certain assumptions or optimizations. This can result either from the new character additions (which increase the number of distinct weights in the table) or because of changes in the way the weights, particularly for secondary weight values, are assigned in the table. The latter change may result in unexpected numbers of characters having the same weight.

Comments are being sought on this article prior to final release. Please send any comments to www-international@w3.org (subscribe). We expect to publish a final version in one to two weeks.

This tutorial was updated to incorporate changes made to BCP 47 by the recent publication of RFC 5646. Changes to BCP 47 include the introduction of extended language subtags, and the addition of ISO 639-3 language subtags, bringing the total number of subtags in the registry to almost 8,000.

Translators should consider retranslating the whole tutorial.

On 1st October, Unicode 5.2 was released! The data files, code charts, and Unicode Standard Annexes for this version are final and are posted on the Unicode site.

For Unicode 5.2, the core specification is no longer just a delta document applied to the book; instead, the entire core specification,with all textual changes integrated, will be available on the Unicode site. As of this announcement, the first five chapters are available; the other chapters will follow soon

For full details about what is new or changed in this release, see the version documentation for Unicode 5.2.

On 15th September, the Internationalization Core Working Group published Requirements for String Identity Matching and String Indexing as a Working Group Note.

This document is being published as a Working Group note in order to capture and preserve historical information. It contains requirements elaborated in 1998 for aspects of the character model for W3C specifications. It was developed and extensively reviewed by the Internationalization Working Group, but never progressed beyond Working Draft status. For this publication, the wording of the 1998 version remains unchanged (except for correction of a small number of typographic errors), but the links to references have been updated prior to this publication.

The document describes requirements for some important aspects of the character model for W3C specifications. The two aspects discussed are string identity matching and string indexing.

Editor: Martin Dürst.

Thanks to the Spanish Translation Team, Spanish Translation US, the following articles have been translated into Spanish.

Codificación de caracteres para principiantes (Character encodings for beginners)
Configuración de codificaciones en aplicaciones de autoría web (Setting encoding in web authoring applications)

Thanks to the Spanish Translation Team, Spanish Translation US, the following articles have been translated into Spanish.

Uso de entidades de caracteres y NCR (Using character entities and NCRs)
Set de caracteres para documentos (Document character set)
Cómo cambiar la codificación de la página (X)HTML a UTF-8 (Changing (X)HTML page encoding to UTF-8)

Thanks to the Spanish Translation Team, Spanish Translation US, the following articles have been translated into Spanish.

Tutorial: Identificación del idioma en XHTML y HTML (Tutorial: Declaring Language in XHTML and HTML)
Encabezado Accept-Language utilizado para ubicar la configuración (Accept-Language used for locale setting)
HTTP y metadatos para información sobre el idioma (HTTP and meta for language information)
¿Por qué utilizar el atributo de idioma? (Why use the language attribute?)
Etiquetado de texto sin idioma (Tagging text with no language)
xml:lang en esquemas de documentos XML (xml:lang in XML document schemas)

The Internationalization Core Working Group has published Authoring HTML: Handling Right-to-left Scripts as a Working Group Note.

This document describes techniques for the use of HTML markup and CSS style sheets when creating content in languages that use right-to-left scripts, such as Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Thaana, Urdu, etc. It builds on (but also goes beyond) markup needed to supplement the Unicode bidirectional algorithm, and also touches on how to prepare content that will later be localized into right-to-left scripts.

Editor: Richard Ishida.

The IETF has published RFC 5646, an update of Tags for Identifying Languages. This specification obsoletes former RFCs 4646, 3066 and 1766.

RFC 5646 makes it possible to use over 7,000 three-letter ISO 639-3 language codes, in addition to the 2 letter codes that have been in use for some time. It also introduces 220 ‘extended language’ subtags, mainly for backwards compatibility.

It continues to be best to refer to this specification as BCP47. This is a non-changing name and web address that points to the latest relevant RFCs.

The Internationalization Working Group at the W3C is working on an article to help users choose language tags, given the various types of subtag that are now available, and the sheer number of subtags.

You can look up language and other subtags in the IANA Language Subtag Registry.

(Richard Ishida has provided an unofficial tool for searching the registry that also provides advice for choosing subtags, and allows you to partially validate a hyphen-separated language tag.)