The goal of this presentation is to inform the audience about the architecture of the ISO 10646/Unicode Standard and to increase the confidence of the audience in the strength of the relationship between the ISO technical working group (ISO/IEC JTC1 SC2/WG2) and the Unicode Consortium.

Now there is only one International Standard that contains the repertoires of the major scripts and languages of the world. As new characters and scripts are added the need for working together to preserve a single International Standard is of the utmost importance. The ISO technical working group and the Unicode Consortium continue to cooperate in the evaluation of any new additions to the repertoire.

Several officers from the ISO technical working group participated in the review of the Unicode 3.0 Book to ensure the continued convergence of both documents. The Unicode 3.0 Book provides renewed guidance to implementers of the International Standard that ensures a uniform and consistent interpretation of the standard across a variety of platforms. Similar reviews were also done for Unicode 3.1 which is also synchronized with the contents and repertoire of ISO 10646-2 which is in the process of being published by ISO Central Secretariat.

It is essential to proceed on this path to meet the original user requirements of having only one International Standard that is flexible and easy to implement. This International Standard is one of the building blocks in creating global and interoperable solutions across multiple platforms that meet and reflect the global market requirements.