Monday, February 20, 2017

Unicode Locale Data v31α available for testing

cldr v31 alpha The Alpha version of Unicode CLDR version 31 is available for testing. The beta v31 will contain updates to the LDML spec and should be available on March 1, with the release of v31 planned for March 15.

CLDR 31 provides an update to the key building blocks for software supporting the world's languages. This data is used by all major software systems for their software internationalization and localization, adapting software to the conventions of different languages for such common software tasks.

Aside from the regular updates to codes and data, some of the more noticeable changes are:
  • Canonical codes
    • The subdivision codes were changed to consistently use the bcp47 format.
    • The locales in the language-territory population data and the exemplars directory were regularized (dropping likely scripts subtags).
    • The timezone ID for GMT has been split from UTC.
    • There is a new mechanism for identifying hybrid locales, such as Hinglish.
  • Subdivisions
    • Names for Scotland, Wales, and England have been added in many languages.
  • Emoji 5.0
    • Short names and keywords have been updated for English.
    • Collation (sorting) adds the new 5.0 Emoji characters and sequences, and some fixes for Emoji 4.0 characters and sequences.
  • Transforms
    • The Zawgyi→Unicode transform has been improved.
    • Tamil can now be transcribed to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
This release did not have a data-submission cycle, so the changes reflect cleanup and bug fixes. For more details, and important notes for smoothly migrating implementations, see Unicode CLDR Version 31. If you find a problem, please file a ticket.