Unicode CLDR 23 has been released, providing an update to the key building blocks for software supporting the world's languages.
Unicode CLDR 23.0 contains data for 215 languages and 227 territories—654locales in all. This release focused primarily on improvements to the LDMLstructure and tools, and on consistency of data. It includes substantiallyimproved support for non-Gregorian calendars (such as the Japanese Imperialcalendar used extensively in Japan). The data and structure has also beenmodified to easily permit changing between 12 and 24 hour formats, andbetween 2 digit and 4 digit years. The new Unicode character is used for theTurkish Lira, and information is provided for currencies that round to 5cents (or other subunits) in cash transactions. For most languages that usenon-Latin scripts, characters in the language's script now collate beforethose in other scripts (including A-Z). Language-specific letter-casingchanges (Lower, Upper, Title) have been added for Azerbaijani, Greek, Lithuanian, and Turkish. Keyboard data has also been updated for Android.Also, as of this release, the LDML specification is split into multiple parts, each focusing on a particular area.
The release had a short cycle so that we could move to the new regularsemi-annual schedule. It thus only included a limited data submissionphase, for 4 languages only: Armenian (hy), Georgian (ka), Mongolian (mn),and Welsh (cy). For those languages, the data increased by over 100%.
About the Unicode ConsortiumThe Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop,extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard and related globalizationstandards. The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum ofcorporations and organizations in the computer and information processingindustry. Members are: Adobe Systems, Apple, Google, Government of AndhraPradesh, Government of Bangladesh, Government of India, IBM, Microsoft,Monotype Imaging, Oracle, SAP, Tamil Virtual University, The University ofCalifornia (Berkeley), Yahoo!, plus well over a hundred Associate, Liaison,and Individual members. For more information, please contact the UnicodeConsortium http://www.unicode.org/contacts.html.
