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Abstract

Unicode in Your Pocket: How the Symbian Platform Implements Unicode for Wireless Information Devices

Graham Asher - Symbian Ltd.

Intended Audience: Software Engineer, Systems Analyst
Session Level: Intermediate

This paper outlines Symbian's support for Unicode. The Symbian platform, known formerly as EPOC, is a powerful multitasking operating system intended for wireless information devices ranging from palmtop computers, through communicator devices marrying telephony and personal information management, to smartphones. The system has run on Unicode only since 1999, and has tracked all the changes in the Unicode standard. An earlier paper delivered at the IUC16 in Amsterdam in March 2000 discussed how design issues were solved in storing Unicode character properties, implementing the standard Unicode collation and compression systems at the base level of the operating system, and adding support for complex scripts. This paper draws on a further year of experience and reports on the lessons that have been learnt over that period, during which the first mobile phone to use the Symbian platform, the Ericsson R380, has been released. Issues discussed in more detail include complex script support for low-level text drawing, conversion between legacy encodings and Unicode, locales and locale-dependent collation, and input method editors for Chinese and Japanese. The paper concludes by claiming that Symbian supports Unicode in most important respects, while admitting that there is still work to be done, for example in support for surrogates. However, developers can work with the Symbian platform in the full confidence that Unicode features work in the way described in The Unicode Standard Version 3.0.


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UnicodeIUC18
Unicode Standard Conference Board Past Conferences Call for Papers Sponsors Showcase
Registration Accommodation Travel Program Talks and Papers Next Conference
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