Information technology -- Universal Coded Character Set (UCS)

Designation Number:
ISO/IEC 10646
Standard Type:
National Standard of Canada - Adoption of International Standard
Standard Development Activity:
New Standard
Status:
Proceeding to development
SDO Comment Period Start Date:
SDO Comment Period End Date:
Posted On:

Scope:

This Standard specifies the Universal Character Set (UCS). It is applicable to the representation, transmission, interchange, processing, storage, input and presentation of the written form of the languages of the world as well as additional symbols. It covers 120 585 characters from the world's scripts. ISO/IEC 10646:2014:
specifies the architecture of ISO/IEC 10646;
defines terms used ISO/IEC 10646;
describes the general structure of the UCS codespace;
specifies the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP) of the UCS;
specifies supplementary planes of the UCS: the Supplementary Multilingual Plane (SMP), the Supplementary Ideographic Plane (SIP), the Tertiary Ideographic Plane (TIP), and the Supplementary Special-purpose Plane (SSP);
defines a set of graphic characters used in scripts and the written form of languages on a world-wide scale;
specifies the names for the graphic characters and format characters of the BMP, SMP, SIP, SSP and their coded representations within the UCS codespace. (Note: TIP is currently empty);
specifies the coded representations for control characters and private use characters;
specifies three encoding forms of the UCS: UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32;
specifies seven encoding schemes of the UCS: UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-16BE, UTF-16LE, UTF-32, UTF-32BE, and UTF-32LE;
specifies the management of future additions to this coded character set.
The charts of the ideographic characters are now in multi-column format. The UCS is an encoding system different from that specified in ISO/IEC 2022. ISO/IEC 10646:2014 specifies the method to designate UCS from ISO/IEC 2022. A graphic character will be assigned only one code point in the standard, located either in the BMP or in one of the supplementary planes. By defining a consistent way of encoding multilingual text it enables the exchange of data internationally. The information technology industry gains data stability, greater global interoperability and data interchange. ISO/IEC 10646 has been widely adopted on the World Wide Web and implemented in modern operating systems and computer languages.

Note: The information provided above was obtained by the Standards Council of Canada (SCC) and is provided as part of a centralized, transparent notification system for new standards development. The system allows SCC-accredited Standards Development Organizations (SDOs), and members of the public, to be informed of new work in Canadian standards development, and allows SCC-accredited SDOs to identify and resolve potential duplication of standards and effort.

Individual SDOs are responsible for the content and accuracy of the information presented here. The text is presented in the language in which it was provided to SCC.