THE UNIVERSAL CHARACTER SET (UCS)

This part of the Guide to the Use of Character Sets in Europe provides more detailed information about the Universal Multi-octet Coded Character Set (UCS) specified in ISO/IEC 10646-1 than is found in the main body of the Guide. Another part of the Guide deals in more detail with 8-bit character set standards.

You may select the major sections of this guide directly from the following table of contents.

CONTENTS

Introduction

• Origins and aims of the UCS
• The UCS and UNICODE

Nature of character data

• Characters, character names and glyphs
• Graphic characters and control characters
• Alphabetic, syllabic and ideographic scripts
• Sequence order and writing mode
• Precomposed and decomposed characters

Coding of character data

• Fixed and variable length codes
• Inadequacy of single-octet codes
• Limitations of two-octet codes
• The four-octet structure of the UCS

Basic Multilingual Plane

• Relationship to 8-bit codes
• The 5 zones of the BMP
• Alphabetic and syllabic scripts of the A-zone
• Unified ideographs of the I-zone
• The Hangul syllabics of the O-zone
• The restricted use R-zone

Visual representation of characters

• Combining and non-combining characters
• Composite sequences
• Use of multiple combining characters

Referencing of characters

• Identification of characters for migration to the UCS
• Naming guidelines of the UCS
• Linguistic translation of character names
• Unique identifiers for characters
• Unique identifiers for glyphs

Repertoires and subsets

• The concept of repertoire
• Levels of implementation of the UCS
• Collections and subsets
• Significance of subsets for conformance to the UCS
• Subsets as an aid to migration from 8-bit codes

Coding methods of the UCS

• The coding alternatives
• UCS-2: Two-octet BMP form
• UCS-4: Four-octet canonical form
• UTF-16: UCS Transformation format 16
• UTF-8: UCS Transformation format 8

Serial transmission of the UCS

• Octet ordering
• Signatures for coding identification

Use of control functions with the UCS

• The coding of control functions in 7-bit and 8-bit codes
• C0 and C1 sets of control characters
• The use of control functions with the UCS
• Identification of UCS subsets by use of control functions
• Invocation of the UCS from an 8-bit code

Top of UCS Guide