Unicode Ate My Brain

Unicode, the universal character set, is one of the foundation
technologies of XML, but it is not yet widely understood. Learn how to
use Unicode and XML to save lots of money and achieve world domination
at the same time.

Instructor(s): John Cowan, Senior Software Developer, The Associated Press

Pre-Requisites:  Some understanding of XML; no knowledge of Unicode
is required.

Technology Requirements: None

Unicode, the universal character set, is one of the foundation
technologies of XML. However, it is not as widely understood as it should
be, because of the unavoidable complexity of handling all of the world's
writing systems, even in a fairly uniform way. This tutorial will provide
the basics about using Unicode and XML to save lots of money and achieve
world domination at the same time.

This tutorial will be divided into five sections:

1) Before the Unicode Standard will explain a little bit about the mess
of existing local character sets.

2) The Unicode Standard will give a basic overview of what Unicode is,
including design principles, conformance, the kinds of characters that
exist in Unicode, and a high-level roadmap to character allocation.

3) Encodings will explain how Unicode characters are encoded in different
environments to balance the competing needs of compactness, simplicity,
and interoperability.

4) Unicode and XML will explain the features of XML that are directly
relevant to Unicode and vice versa.

5) And finally The Programmer's View will discuss the various techniques
for dealing with Unicode characters and strings programmatically.

NOTE:  This tutorial has been updated to Unicode 4.1, the latest standard.
An explanation of the Unicode features of XML 1.1 is also supplied.