1.4 Supporting the Unicode Standard

Unicode (Universal Codeset) is a universal character encoding scheme developed and promoted by the Unicode Consortium, a non-profit organization which includes Sun Microsystems. The Unicode standard encompasses most alphabetic, ideographic, and symbolic characters.

Using one universal codeset enables applications to support text from multiple scripts in the same documents without elaborate tagging. However, applications must treat Unicode as any another codeset--applying codeset independence to Unicode as well.

Unicode locales are called the same way and function the same way as all other locales in the Solaris operating environment. These locales provide the extra benefits that the Unicode codeset brings to the work environment, including the ability to create text in multiple scripts without having to switch locales. Sun Microsystems provides the same level of Unicode locale support for both 32-bit and 64-bit Solaris environments.