UNICODE VERSION 8.0
The Unicode standard is an international platform for character encoding. It is the most popular and presiding character encoding platform in the world. It is the only platform that supports over 100,000 languages that are used in the world. It translates every written character into different global writing systems. The Unicode standard version 8.0 was also published by the Unicode consortium. This version was a major update over version 7.0. It was released on June 17, 2015.
The Unicode version 8.0 contains a total of 120,672 characters. This version includes 7716 additional characters in its character set. These additional characters include six new scripts as well as many symbols. New scripts are added to many existing scripts, giving it more number of scripts. This version of the Unicode standard also includes the support for lesser-used and unique written languages in the world. Following are the scripts that re-added in version 9.0:
- The Ahom script is added in this version. It is used for the support of the Tai Ahom language used in India.
- A large repertoire of CJK unified ideographs is also added in this version.
- Georgian Lari currency symbol is added also.
- Many letters are added to support the IK language in Uganda, Kulango in Cote de Ivoire, and many other languages in Africa.
- Emoji symbols and emoji modifiers are also added. They are sued to modify the emoji characters.
- A set of lowercase Cherokee symbols are also added. They are added to form case pairs with the existing Cherokee characters.
- Multiple Arabic letters are added to support the Tamil language Arwi.
An important update in version 8.0 is the change in the encoding model of New Tai Lue. The two important updates in the specifications of this version are as follows:
- Unicode collation algorithm. It is used to store the written text that has to be encoded or has been encoded.
- Unicode compatibility processing. It is used for the processing of Non-ASCII URLs.
Following are the stability policy updates in this version:
- The case folding stability has been clarified and improved from its previous version. It is clarified for the fact that the target could either be uppercase or lowercase.
- A new constraint is also included in the stability policy of this version. It constitutes the script extensions property of the value for the character.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Unicode version 8.0
Following are some of the advantages and disadvantages of the version 8.0:
The disadvantages of this version are as follows:
There are no significant changes or updates in the conformance requirements of this version. There are no revisions in the Unicode Technical standard. It just added six scripts, which are very few as compared to its previous version.
Here are the advantages of this version:
This version features a lot of advantages. It has significant updates over the previous versions. New updates are also added to the core specifications of this version. This version features new emoji characters with new and historic scripts. It also supports the scripts that are lesser-used and are very unique.
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