Acclaim for Unicode

“The world is a global village, trade crosses language barriers, and yet every one of us likes to feel comfortable within their own mother tongue. Unicode enabled us to give the local sense to every one of our users, while connecting the world of trade—which is the reason we will support Unicode in all of our products.”

—Shai Agassi, former Member
SAP Executive Board

“By leveraging the Unicode Standard, Progress Software is enabling its ASPs (Application Service Providers) and ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) to quickly and efficiently deliver their business applications to the Internet and to users around the world.”

—Joseph Alsop, President and Co-Founder
Progress Software

“The Unicode Standard is a vital resource for scholars and other users of text: it helps to make texts in the world’s modern and historic languages accessible and searchable, and provides a stable standard for long-term archiving.”

—Deborah Anderson, Project Leader, Script Encoding Initiative,
Dept. of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley

“The Unicode Consortium has been committed to making mathematical notation available for direct use in electronic documents. Substantial improvements to that end in the Unicode Standard make the latest release a must. Once tools have been upgraded to Unicode 5.0, they will bring this power to users in mathematics and the hard sciences.

—Barbara Beeton, Composition Systems Staff Specialist
American Mathematical Society

“The W3C was founded to develop common protocols to lead the evolution of the World Wide Web. The path W3C follows to making text on the Web truly global is Unicode. Unicode is fundamental to the work of the W3C; it is a component of W3C Specifications, from the early days of HTML, to the growing XML Family of specifications and beyond.”

—Sir Tim Berners-Lee, KBE
Web Inventor and Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

“Over the past two decades, Unicode has become one of the most important global standards in digital typography. Unicode 5.0, with its greatly increased range, will be of tremendous benefit to software developers involved with text processing, including font designers, application developers, web browser developers, and operating system manufacturers. Computer users around the world, including scholars, librarians, and scientists, as well as general users, will likewise benefit from broad adoption of the Unicode Standard, which has become an essential component of world literacy in the digital age.”

—Charles Bigelow, Emeritus Professor of Graphic Arts
Rochester Institute of Technology

ᎤᏙᎯᏳ ᎣᏍᏗᎸᏉᏗᎭ ᎠᎴ ᎡᎳᏗ ᏃᏍᏓᏛᏁ ᎣᏍᏓ ᎣᏍᏗᏰᎸᎾᏁᎭ ᎾᏍᎩ ᏣᎳᎩ ᎠᏰᎵ ᎢᏳᏃ ᎾᏍᎩ ᏳᏂᎪᏗ ᎤᎾᏓᏡᎬ ᏂᎨᏒᎾ ᏱᎨᏎ, ᎠᏴ ᎢᎩᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ ᎥᏝ ᏰᎵ ᎤᎿ ᎢᏴ ᏱᎦᎦᏙᎨ ᎾᎿ ᎪᎯᎢᎦ ᏥᎦᏙᎦ ᎢᎬᏱ ᏄᏍᏛ ᏄᎾᏛᏁᎸ ᎠᏂᏐ ᏱᏓᏟᎶᏍᏔᎾ. ᎠᏴᏃ ᎢᎦᏤᎵ ᎤᏍᏆᏂᎪᏗ ᏄᏍᏗᏓᎾ ᏏᏉᏯ ᏚᏬᏪᎳᏅᎯ ᏃᏊ ᏗᏟᏃᎮᏗ ᏓᏅᏗᎭ, ᎤᏅᏥᏙ, ᎠᎴ ᏴᏫ ᏓᏁᏩᏗᏒ ᏂᎬᎾᏛ ᎡᎶᎯ ᏫᏚᏳᎪᏛᎢ ᎪᎯ ᏥᎩ. Ꮭ ᏱᎪᎯᎦ ᏥᎨᏒ ᎤᎶᏐᏂᏕᎾ ᎨᏒ ᎢᏗᏬᏂᏍᎬ, ᎠᏎᏃ ᏃᏊ ᎤᏟᏂᎩᏓ ᎦᏙᎦ ᎠᎴ ᏂᎬᏟᎢᎵ ᎠᏅᏗᏍᎬ ᎪᎯ ᏣᏁᎭ ᎠᏅᏗ ᏓᎾᏟᏃᎮᏍᎬᎢ. ᎾᏍᎩᏃ ᎢᏳᏍᏗ, ᎢᏨᏯᎵᎡᎵᏤᎭ ᎤᎪᏗᏊ.
We are very honored and humbled to be representing the Cherokee Nation. Without the work of the Unicode Consortium, our language would not be poised in the great position it is technologically. Our unique syllabic writing system is being used on smartphones, computers, and social media all over the world now. It once was in danger of dying out, but now it strongly continues in all the modern media communications. For that, we thank you all greatly.

—Roy Boney, Language Technologist
Cherokee Nation

“Embrace Unicode, don't fight it; it's probably the right thing to do, and if it weren't you'd probably have to anyhow.... Go off to Amazon or somewhere and buy the latest revision of the printed Unicode Standard; it contains pretty well everything you need to know.”

—Tim Bray, co-inventor of XML

“The IETF has made the Unicode-compatible UTF-8 format of ISO 10646 the basis for its preferred default character encoding for internationalization of Internet application protocols, so I am delighted to see the official release of Unicode 5.0.”

—Brian E. Carpenter, former Chair, Internet Engineering Task Force
former Distinguished Engineer, Internet Standards & Technology, IBM

“Google’s objective is to organize the world’s information and to make it accessible. Unicode plays a central role in this effort because it is the principal means by which content in every language can be represented in a form that can be processed by software. As Unicode extends its coverage of the world’s languages, it helps Google accomplish its mission.”

—Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist
Google, Inc.

“Unicode est la contribution la plus importante de ces dernières années: grâce à ce standard, l’ordinateur est devenu un outil universel de communication et d’échange.”
“Unicode has been the most important contribution of these last years: thanks to this standard, computers have become a universal tool for communication and exchange.”

—Bernard Desgraupes
Passeport pour Unicode

“The Unicode Standard Version 7.0 is a great milestone for the Unicode Standard, which has been critical to computing since it was first published in 1991. With extended script and character support, this new version is key to bridging the digital divide by enabling ever more people to access computing in the language they use every day. The extensive coverage of symbols,  e.g., mathematical and emoji, expedites the creation of all kinds of modern documents and text messages. Unicode is a text foundation for almost all Microsoft products and technologies.”

—Bill Gates, Chairman
Microsoft Corporation

“Unicode transformed characters from being a random collection of bits to things of meaning. Without Unicode, Java wouldn’t be Java, and the Internet would have a harder time connecting the people of the world.”

—James Gosling, Inventor of Java
formerly of Sun Microsystems, Inc.

“In the Directorate-General for Translation of the European Commission, the databases for internal document management and the interfaces of software applications and hardware equipment—including keyboards—have been built around Unicode, allowing representation of alphabets of all languages. Therefore, introducing languages using Cyrillic characters, or any other character set recognised by Unicode, is no problem”

—Tytti Granqvist, Coordinator for External Communication
Directorate-General for Translation of the European Commission

“Unicode, the character-encoding scheme, is already a key standard for internationalization. Its relevance will increase as Web services and e-business become increasingly globalized.”

—Nick Jones, Vice President
Gartner’s Research

“... யூனிக்கோடு குறியேற்பையே சீர்தரமாக அறிவிக்குமாறு தமிழ்நாடு, இந்தியா, இலங்கை, சிங்கப்பூர், மலேசியா, மொரிசியசு அரசுகளுக்கு உத்தமம் (http://infitt.org) அமைப்பு பரிந்துரைக்கிறது. ஸ்ரீலங்கா யூனிக்கோடைச் சீர்தரமாக SLS1326 வாயிலாகச் செப்டம்பர் 2008‍ல் ஏற்றுள்ளது.”

“... INFITT recommends to the Governments of Tamil Nadu, India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia and Mauritius declare Unicode as current standard for Tamil encoding. [Note: Sri Lanka adopted the Unicode/ISO10646 standard for encoding Tamil in Sept 2008, in Sri Lanka Standard SLS1326.]”

Reference 1: http://www.infitt.org/ti2009/day3/TIC%202009%20communique%20(English).pdf

—Dr. K. KalyanaSundaram, Chairman
—Va.Mu.Se. Kaviarasan, Executive Director
—T.N.C.Venkatarangan, Vice Chairman
International Forum for Information Technology in Tamil (INFITT)

“Why keep trying to cram an expressive syntax into the straitjacket of the 95 glyphs of ASCII when Unicode has been the new black for most of the past decade?”

—Poul-Henning Kamp, FreeBSD Committer

“Javaの文字プリミティヴ型がUnicodeであるため 、国際化されたJavaアプリケーションの地球市場への対応は、ユニコードが提供する文字の特性と種類に非常に依存する 。Javaコミュニティーの一員として、私はユニコード標準第5版の刊行を大いに歓迎する。開発者たちは、Unicode 5.0を用いることにより、そのかつてないほどの包括的な説明により、実装が非常に容易にな ったことを見いだすだろう。また、世界中のコンピューターユーザーたちは、より多くの言語が利用可能になったことを感謝するだろう。”
“Because the character primitive in Java is Unicode, the global market readiness of internationalized Java applications depends on the features and coverage of the scripts that Unicode provides. As a member of the Java community, I greatly welcome Unicode 5.0. Developers will find it easy to implement—the standard is far more thoroughly explained than ever before. Computer users in global markets will also appreciate its larger coverage of scripts.”

—風間一洋、ユニコード標準第5版日本語翻訳チーム、NTT主任研究員
—Kazuhiro Kazama, Senior Research Engineer
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Japan

“The development of Unicode has underscored the Internet’s truly global character. The recorded history of every nation and culture can travel in its natural form across Cyberspace for the use of anyone, anywhere. Through the power of Unicode, a worldwide audience is finally able to share in the breadth of human creativity.”

—Brendan Kehoe
Zen and the Art of the Internet

“Aramaic has been in continuous use for over 3,000 years, and Unicode—in its adoption of the Syriac form of Aramaic—ensured that this ancient legacy will continue to serve humanity, linking ancient tablets and parchment to today’s digital memory cells and even to the unknown media of tomorrow. The inheritors of the Syriac heritage today and academia are most indebted to the Unicode Standard.”

—George Anton Kiraz, President & Director
Gorgias Press & The Syriac Institute

“Hardcopy versions of the Unicode Standard have been among the most crucial and most-heavily used reference books in my personal library for years. Unicode allows me to celebrate the fact that computer science is a vast worldwide collaboration. And Unicode is perhaps the best tool I know to help bring understanding between people of different cultures.”

—Donald E. Knuth, Professor Emeritus of The Art of Computer Programming
Stanford University

“Unicode is a global standard whose ambitious goal is to uniquely encode every character of every language in the world. It is needed for all forms of print and digital communication as the world moves increasingly toward becoming a global, information-driven society. These are historic times in the Information Age; decisions made today will likely impact the way the world interchanges information for centuries to come. It is especially important that minority language groups and their writing systems are carefully researched to determine exactly what should be included in Unicode. Without a good way to encode these writing systems in Unicode, these minority language groups—some numbering in the millions of people—cannot fully participate in the digital information society that most of the world takes for granted.”

—Joel Lee, Former Director Non-Roman Script Initiative
SIL International

“インド系の文字は世界中で最も多様で複雑な文字群であり 、コンピューターでの扱いも非常に困難である。しかし、近年のユニコード方式によるインド系文字の実装には目を見張るも のがある。ILCAA（東京外国語大学アジアアフリカ言語文化研究所）は、かねてからインド系言語向けの高度な入力支援システムをオ ープンソースとして開発してきたこともあり、ユニコード標準第５版の刊行を歓迎する。この刊行が、学術面でも実用面でも有益な進展を もたらすことは疑いを得ない。”
“Indic scripts form the most diversified and complicated script group in the world, and are the most difficult to handle with computers. Recent improvements in the implementation of Indian scripts based on the Unicode architecture are marvelous. ILCAA has been developing an advanced open-source input method system for Indic scripts, and welcomes the publication of the Unicode Standard, Version 5.0. There is no doubt that this publication will provide useful improvements for academic and practical use.”

—町田和彦、東京外国語大学アジアアフリカ言語文化研究所教授
Kazuhiko Machida, Professor of Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA), Tokyo University of Foreign Studies

“Our innate desire to communicate defines us, both as individuals and as a species. Operating systems such as Solaris 10 use Unicode to enable humans to communicate across the Internet, and to bridge the digital divide.”

—Tim Marsland, Software CTO, VP/Fellow
Sun Microsystems, Inc.

“For teaching and research in the field of ancient Greek, Unicode is a godsend, offering truly effective communication across platforms and applications after two decades of frustrations caused by inconsistent custom encodings. Users of other historical and threatened scripts are learning that they too have much to gain from Unicode.”

—Donald J. Mastronarde, Melpomene Professor of Classics
University of California, Berkeley

“Unicode, as an enabler to support multiple languages and locales across multiple platforms without re-engineering, is a solid foundation for all software in a global economy. IBM’s implementation of Unicode support across our product lines echoes our overall commitment to the importance of open standards in the evolving global marketplace.”

—Steve Mills, Senior VP and Group Executive
IBM Software and Systems

“仏教研究には、デーヴァナーガリー文字、チベット文字、CJKV文字など、様々な文字が必要である。Unicodeは、各国の伝統文化を尊重し、古典学に必要な文字を充実させてきている。また、Unicodeに基づく環境が整備されたことにより、世界中の研究者間での情報交換が特に容易となっている。ユニコードを基盤技術とすることにより、将来の仏教研究は急速に発展することを確信する。”
“Research in Buddhism requires handling scripts such as Devanagari, Tibetan and Han Ideographs. Unicode has been extended to scripts needed for classical studies, respecting the diversity of traditions and cultures. The recent increase of Unicode-capable environments has made it especially easy to exchange information among researchers around the world. I am convinced that future research in Buddhist studies will rapidly develop based on Unicode infrastructure.”

—師茂樹：仏教学、ユニコード日本語版翻訳チーム、花園大学講師
Shigeki Moro, Lecturer
Momozono Gakuin University

“XML用のソフトウェアツールは、XMLがユニコードを採用したこ とによって、非常によく国際化されている。ユニコード第5版へのJIS X 0213の追加は、日本の電子政府で必要とされる多くの文字を使用可能とする。”
“XML software tools are well internationalized, thanks to XML’s adoption of Unicode. The addition of JIS X 0213 characters to Unicode 5.0 provides the characters required by the Japanese e-government.”

—村田真、国際大学
Makoto Murata
International University of Japan

“Unicode marks the most significant advance in writing systems since the Phoenicians.”

—James J. O’Donnell, Provost,
Georgetown University

“I applaud the efforts of the Unicode community, ensuring computers worldwide work seamlessly in everyone’s language.”

—Larry Page, co-founder
Google, Inc.

“Unicode is a vital part of the effort to make computing global.”

—Rob Pike, co-inventor of UTF-8

“Using Unicode, Language Log displays crucial examples in the writing systems of Arabic, Bengali, Burmese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and more other languages than you could shake a stick at; and in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Unicode 5.0 opens up yet more possibilities. Unicode is a big part of what makes something like Language Log possible.”

—Geoff Pullum
Languagelog.com

“Unicode and its companion ISO/IEC 10646 overcome the limitations and confusion of all earlier character coding standards. They enable every nation and community to write its own language with computers. They ensure a firm foundation for reliable and efficient interchange of text worldwide.”

—Hugh McGregor Ross
First editor of ISO/IEC 10646

“Apple has been supporting Unicode since the beginning. We’re thrilled to see the growing adoption of Unicode and welcome Unicode 5.0 as a new milestone in the definition of the standard.”

—Bertrand Serlet, former Senior Vice President of Software Engineering
Apple, Inc.

“Wikimedia leverages the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) to support over 300 languages. We use CLDR for all of our Wikipedia websites as well as for core services such as fundraising. Wikimedia contributes back language names and other data for new locales such as fallback locales, plural rules, collation, character set, territory language and day period categories. We want to extend special thanks to Steven Loomis, Mark Davis and other contributors on the CLDR team for keeping CLDR open and accessible to all.”

—Alolita Sharma, former Director of Engineering
Internationalization & Localization
Wikimedia Foundation

“Unicode is arguably the most widely adopted software standard in the world, reaching into any program, application or system that displays text. Though starting from a high point, Unicode 5.0 manages to increase quality yet again, which will continue to expand adoption and support integration.”

—Richard Mark Soley, Ph.D, Chairman and CEO
Object Management Group

“If you are a programmer working in 2006 and you don’t know the basics of characters, character sets, encodings, and Unicode, and I catch you, I’m going to punish you by making you peel onions for six months in a submarine.”

—Joel Spolsky
Joel on Software

“The Java™ programming language was designed to be a portable, platform-independent programming language for the World Wide Web—not the ASCII Web or the ISO-Latin-1 Web, but for the entire world. It was for this reason that Java’s designers broke out of the 8-bit straitjacket and based the character and string datatypes firmly on Unicode, the character encoding standard designed to support all the world’s languages for truly international communication and commerce. Version 5.0 of the Unicode Standard is the most comprehensive and thoroughly documented version yet.”

—Guy L. Steele Jr., Sun Fellow
Sun Microsystems, Inc.

“ジャストシステムは、日本で初めてユニコードベースのワードプロセ ッサーを開発しました。このことにより、10年以上も前から、日本のコンピューターユーザーはユニコード、特に日中韓の統合漢 字の恩恵を享受してきました。ジャストシステムは現在、”xfy”というJava環境で稼働する 先進的なXML関連製品の世界市場への展開を積極的に推進していますが、ユニコードを基盤としているために、”xfy”は初めから国際化されているのです。ジャストシステムは、ユニコードの普遍的な思想とアーキテクチャに 感謝するとともに、その第5版の刊行を心から歓迎します。”
“Justsystems was the first vendor in Japan to implement the Unicode architecture in word processing software. Thus for over a decade Japanese computer users have enjoyed the benefits of Unicode, especially the CJK Unified Ideographs. We are now aggressively launching our new technology ‘xfy’; on XML and Java—thanks to Unicode, it is already internationalized! Justsystems appreciates the Unicode philosophy and architecture of universality, and welcomes the publication of version 5.0.”

—浮川和宣：株式会社ジャストシステム代表取締役社長
Kazunori Ukigawa, President and CEO
Justsystems Corp.

“[Unicode] is [the] standard that enables nearly all those living in the world today to communicate with each other in their native language character sets. It even permits the words of many of those that lived in the past to become accessible to those alive today in electronic form, and in their original character sets as well.”

—Andy Updegrove
United States National Standards Strategy Committee

“Modern programs must handle Unicode —Python has excellent support for Unicode, and will keep getting better.”

—Guido van Rossum
Inventor of Python

“Unicode is marvellous. It makes it possible for phoneticians throughout the world to use all manner of phonetic symbols in their work and display them on computer screens in the certainty that they will not now be garbled or turned into wingdings (as once used to happen all too often). All alphabetic phonetic symbols officially recognized by the International Phonetic Association are now included in the Unicode Standard.”

—John Wells, President
International Phonetic Association

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