ICU 73.2 & CLDR 43.1 released: GB18030 compliance updates & compatibility fixes

Unicode® ICU 73.2 and CLDR 43.1 have just been released.

• ICU is the premier library for software internationalization, used by a wide array of companies and organizations to support the world's languages, implementing both the latest version of the Unicode Standard and of the Unicode locale data (CLDR).
  
• CLDR provides key building blocks for software to support the world's languages (dates, times, numbers, sort-order, etc.). All major browsers and all modern mobile phones use CLDR for language support. (See Who uses CLDR?)
  

There are significant changes for GB18030-2022 compliance support:

• CLDR extends the support for “short” Chinese sort orders to cover some additional, required characters for Level 2. This is carried over into ICU collation.
  
• ICU has a modified character conversion table, mapping some GB18030 characters to Unicode characters that were encoded after GB18030-2005.
  

There are also changes for compatibility:

• There are optional variants of time formats with AM/PM (only for English) using ASCII spaces in CLDR that can also be used in ICU via custom data generation. This is intended to help certain implementers transition to the improved patterns, which have used a narrow no-break space between the time and AM/PM since CLDR 42.
  
  • For how to generate ICU data with this option, look for alt="ascii" on tools/cldr/cldr-to-icu/README.md
• The changes to the word segmentation behavior of @ sign that were in CLDR 42 (ICU 72) have been reverted. These caused problems for certain parsers that did not expect @ to join to letters.
  

ICU 73.2 updates to CLDR 43.1 locale data. These are maintenance releases for ICU 73 and CLDR 43, with limited sets of bug fixes and no API or structural changes. ICU 73.2 and CLDR 43.1 include several other bug fixes, including person name formatting, and Cyrillic transforms.

For details, please see:

• ICU 73.2 Release Note: ICU 73.2 maintenance release
  
• CLDR 43.1 Release Note: Version 43.1 Changes
  

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Unlocking the Power of CLDR Person Name Formatting: A Solution for Formatting Names in a Globalized World

By Mike McKenna, Chair of CLDR Person Names Subcommittee



CLDR Person Names has moved from “tech preview” to “draft” status and is available for initial testing by implementors through ICU4J.

How a person’s name is displayed and used can convey respect, familiarity, or even be interpreted as rude if used improperly. That’s why it’s important to format names correctly, especially because naming practices vary across the globe. In many cultures, names can indicate gender, status, birthplace, nationality, ethnicity, religion, and more.

Until now, there have been no good standards for how to format people’s names in various contexts. A number of Unicode members wanted to address this problem and provide a mechanism that anyone could use to format people’s names in a wide variety of applications, such as contact lists, air travel, billing applications, CRMs, social media, and any other application that asks for user information and presents it back to the user or others.

The Unicode® Person Name Formats defines patterns used to take a person’s name and format it correctly in a given language or locale depending on a chosen context. With the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR), locale codes and name sequences can be selected to create a specific pattern for formatting a person’s name — including preferences for formal, informal, or abbreviated versions. As a result, designers and developers can correctly display names according to the user’s native locale and culture, especially important when integrating names in different character scripts, such as Japanese, Chinese, or Russian.

The Unicode Consortium added Person Name formatting to CLDR in v42 and has been refined and enhanced for v43, which just released in April. In CLDR v43, with the help of linguists from around the world, we completed data for formatting people’s names for CLDR locales at modern coverage. Its formal name is "Unicode Technical Standard #35 Unicode Locale Data Markup Language (LDML); Part 8: Person Names". ICU has added the PersonNameFormatter class and is available in ICU 73.

To learn more, and get an idea of the implications for user experience and application design, see the following paper, which provides an illustration of the many contexts in which names can be formatted through CLDR Person Names.

LDML (UTS#35) Part 8: Person Names - a story teller’s case study

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Support Unicode
To support Unicode’s mission to ensure everyone can communicate in their languages across all devices, please consider adopting a character, making a gift of stock, or making a donation. As Unicode, Inc. is a US-based open source, open standards, non-profit, 501(c)3 organization, your contribution may be eligible for a tax deduction. Please consult with a tax advisor for details.