ICU is a very powerful set of components that provide both Unicode and locale support. ICU provides that same cross platform support that you find in Java but with C/C++ performance. It also provides Java enhancements for computable functionality for mixed C/C++ and Java environments.

This lecture will cover four major aspects of developing code for ICU:

1. Designing a thread safe interface for ICU calls. Using thread and locale context structures to simplify design.
2. Implementing wrapper code to provide a common usage to ICU. Invoking ICU for common functions.
3. Special considerations for environments such as the Apache Web server.
4. Extending ICU to support UTF-8 and UTF-32. Providing Unicode transformations and parallel function implementations for different data formats.

Users will also be provided with sample open source code that will simplify their initial ICU implementations in new and existing code.

With tools like ICU there is no longer any excuse not to convert your applications to Unicode. This lecture will cover how to develop cross-platform Unicode applications with ease.

Using Unicode to internationalize applications is as easy or easier that code page based globalization. You can even migrate code page based code to Unicode with very little effort.