The newly finalized Unicode Version 6.0 adds 2,088 characters, with over 1,000 new symbols.

The October 2010 release includes the Unicode Character Database (UCD), Unicode Standard Annexes (UAXes), and code charts. With the release of these components, implementers are able update their software to Unicode 6.0 without delay. The final text of the core specification will be available in early 2011.

A long-awaited feature of Unicode 6.0 is the encoding of hundreds of symbols for mobile phones. These emoji characters are in widespread use, especially in Japan, and have become an essential part of text messages there and elsewhere. Unicode 6.0 now provides for data interchange between different mobile vendors and across the internet. The symbols include symbols for many domains: maps and transport, phases of the moon, UI symbols (such as fast-forward) and many others – including the symbol for mobile phone itself.

A late-breaking addition is the newly created official symbol for the Indian rupee. “With the help of the Indian government and our colleagues in ISO, we were able to accelerate the encoding process.” said Mark Davis, president of the Consortium. “Once computers and mobile phones update to the new version of Unicode, people will be able to use the rupee sign like they use $ or € now.”

The MultilingualWeb project, funded by the European Commission and coordinated by the W3C, is looking at best practices and standards related to all aspects of creating, localizing and deploying the multilingual Web. The project will raise visibility of what’s available and identify gaps via a series of four events, over two years.

The first workshop takes place in Madrid on 26-27 October 2010. It is free and open to the public.

A first view of the workshop program has just been published. Speakers represent a wide range of organizations and interests, such as:

BBC, DFKI, European Commission, Facebook, Google, Loquendo, LRC, Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, SAP, W3C, WHO, WWW Foundation, and more.

Session titles include: Developers, Creators, Localizers, Machines, and Users. The workshop should provide useful cross-domain networking opportunities.

If you are interested in attending the workshop, see the Call for Participation for details on how to register.

Idiomas na Web (Choosing & applying a character encoding)

This ‘Getting Started’ article was translated into Brazilian Portuguese thanks to Matheus Salmi, CZ SEE.

Escolha e uso de codificação de caracteres (Choosing & applying a character encoding)

This article was translated into Portuguese thanks to Maurício Samy Silva.

The MultilingualWeb project, funded by the European Commission and coordinated by the W3C, is looking at best practices and standards related to all aspects of creating, localizing and deploying the multilingual Web. The project will raise visibility of what’s available and identify gaps via a series of four events, over two years.

The first workshop takes place in Madrid on 26-27 October 2010.

Many interesting speaker proposals have already been submitted, and the program committee has also now confirmed lead speakers for each of the main workshop sessions from the following organizations:

Internationalizers: W3C
Creators: BBC World Service
Localizers: SAP
Users: Facebook
Machines: DFKI
Policy makers: Localisation Research Centre

See the Call for Participation for details about how to register for the workshop.

In particular, if you wish to speak at this event, and haven’t yet submitted a proposal, please send an expression of interest (see the CFP) by September 17th.

Normalização para HTML e CSS (Normalization in HTML and CSS)

This article was translated into Portuguese thanks to Maurício Samy Silva.

Some articles are brand new and others were originally part of a tutorial, but have been updated and amplified to bring HTML5 to the fore and incorporate feedback from various readers. The articles are:

1. Character encodings: Essential concepts
2. Choosing & applying a character encoding
3. Declaring character encodings in HTML
4. The byte-order mark (BOM) in HTML
5. Normalization in HTML and CSS
6. Characters or markup?

Together these articles, with several other existing articles that were updated at the same time, provide practical advice to content authors on how to handle character encodings in HTML and CSS.

Numerous changes were made to this article to address feedback, eliminate duplication in other articles, and reflect the passage of time. The focus of the article was changed to address not just XHTML 1.0 authors, but those working with HTML, XHTML and CSS in general, and sets out to provide simple introductions to MIME types and standards vs. quirks modes for authors that can be referenced from other articles. For more information about changes see below.

View the article.

French, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Swedish and Thai translators are requested to update their translations.

Description of changes:

• much of the text and article structure was rewritten
• the title was changed
• the latest template was applied, and various new style conventions that affect the markup
• changes were made to the Further Reading section

Translators should retranslate the whole article.

Content from this tutorial was distributed across several new and existing articles to reduce duplication and improve usability and maintainability. The completely rewritten tutorial provides a succinct summary of advice at the start, and then gathers together and organizes pointers to articles that, taken together, help you grasp the subject matter. The title was also changed.

Content derived from the previous version of the tutorial (ie. in the new articles) has been updated to include HTML5.

View the tutorial.

Numerous changes were made to this article to address feedback and also incorporate material on CSS escapes from the character encoding tutorial. This and other changes are described below. View the article.

German, Spanish, and Brazilian and Iberian Portuguese translators should consider updating it.

Description of changes:

• various parts of the text were rewritten
• the title and the question were changed
• the latest template was applied, and various new style conventions that affect the markup
• two new sections were added relating to CSS
• substantial changes were made to the Further Reading section

Translators should retranslate the whole article.