Unicode CLDR 34 alpha available for testing

The alpha version of Unicode CLDR 34 is available for testing. The alpha period lasts until the beta release on September 26, which will include updates to the LDML spec. The final release is expected on October 10.

CLDR 34 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.

CLDR 34 included a full Survey Tool data collection phase. Other enhancements include several changes to prepare for the new Japanese calendar era starting 2019-05-01; updated emoji names, annotations, collation and grouping; and other specific fixes. The draft release page at http://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-34 lists the major features, and has pointers to the newest data and charts. It will be fleshed out over the coming weeks with more details, migration issues, known problems, and so on. Particularly useful for review are:

• Delta Charts - the data that changed during the release
• By-Type Charts - a side-by-side comparison of data from different locales
• Annotation Charts - new emoji names and keywords

Please report any problems that you find using a CLDR ticket. We'd also appreciate it if programmatic users of CLDR data download the xml files and do a trial integration to see if any problems arise.