Introduction to Unicode Version 1

UNICODE 1.0

Version 1.0 was the first Unicode version. It was published in October 1991 containing 24 scripts. This version of Unicode encoded 7129 characters in total. It didn’t contain any machine-readable files because it was the first and earliest version of Unicode. The Unicode character database contained character mapping and properties.

Unicode 1.0 was the most important version of Unicode. It was the first released version of the Unicode Standard. Talking about its core specifications, it contains properties and descriptions for different characters. The Unicode version 1.0, 1.0.1, and 1.1 was released preliminary to the ISO/IEC. Volume 1 was released in June 1992 and volume 2 was released in June 1993. Volume 1 was similar to version 1.0.0, but volume 2 added some minor changes and corrections.

The Unicode version 1.0 included some major implementations for guidelines including extensive mapping tables. It also included the earliest source references that define the Han unification. No online tables were added in the earlier version. But the later version included the online mapping tables, which were made at the request of the Unicode consortium.

Unicode 1.1

This is the later version of Unicode 1.0 and 1.0.1. It was published in June 1993. This version of Unicode added slight changes and improvements over the earlier versions of the Unicode Standard. It is a minor version of the Unicode standard that supersedes over all the previous versions. Beyond the stored documented specifications, this version included properties and descriptions for multiple additional characters. This version was also published before the ISO/IEC.

This version encoded 34,168 characters in total. 5,963 characters were included in this version out of which 89 characters were removed and 33 characters were reclassified as control characters. This Unicode version also included Hungary syllables. It contained 4306 Hungal syllables which were added to the original set of characters.

Advantages and disadvantages of Unicode 1.0, 1.1

Every version of the Unicode standard has multiple advantages. And those who contain advantages would probably have disadvantages as well. Following are some of the advantages and disadvantages of the Unicode versions 1.0, 1.0.1, and 1.1.

The Unicode version 1.0 was the first and major Unicode standard that encoded 7129 characters. It lacks machine-readable files. It contained databases about character properties and mapping. This Unicode version covers many scripts such as Arabic, Bengali, Gujarati, Greek, Georgian, Latin, Hangul, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Thai, Tibetan, Bopomofo, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Coptic, Hebrew, Hiragana, Katakana, Lao, and Oriya. The Unicode version 1.0.1 included sets of 20,902 CJK unified ideographs which were defined in this version. The Unicode version 1.1 was the first version to synchronize with ISO/IEC. However, version 1.0 and 1.0.1 have no support for machine-readable files and also lack online mapping tables. But the Unicode version 1.1 with being the first coextensive version also included the online mapping tables. This version of the Unicode standard also included 4306 Hungal syllables making it more advantageous. Version 1.1 encoded 34,168 characters from which 33 characters were reclassified as control characters.

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