Registration is Now Open!

A number of scripts, such as Hebrew, Arabic and Urdu, write their letters horizontally on a page or screen, running right to left. A complication for these scripts is that other characters, such as digits, flow left-to-right, and can occur on the same line, or even alongside other left-to-right text, such as Latin. Text that handles both right-to-left and left-to-right text is called “bidirectional” text (“bidi” in short).

How to handle bidi text on browsers and in other software is challenging for both general users and implementers. This webinar will describe the basics with examples. It will be followed by a live question-and-answer period. A more in-depth question and answer session will take place August 13, 2024.

Who? If you are a translator/localizers, localization tooling maker, I18n infrastructure developer, linguist and language researcher, application developer, or a content author, you will want to join us for this webinar. Bring your questions to the people involved for the live Q&A.

When? Tuesday, 25 June 2024 starting at 8am (San Francisco), 11am (New York), and 5pm (Berlin).

Registration is Open Now! Please note this session will also be recorded and available via the Unicode YouTube channel.

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Getting Started with Bidirectional Text (Part 1): The Basics of Bidi

Frequently Asked Questions: https://unicode.org/faq/bidi.html

Articles:

• https://www.w3.org/International/articles/inline-bidi-markup/uba-basics
• https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-scripts
• https://www.w3.org/International/techniques/authoring-html#direction
• https://w3c.github.io/i18n-drafts/techniques/authoring-html.en#gsdirection

Additional Articles from W3C:

• https://www.w3.org/International/articlelist#direction

About the Unicode Consortium

The Unicode Consortium is the premier non-profit open source, open standards body for the internationalization of all software and services.

For more than 30 years, the Unicode Consortium has coordinated the efforts of a worldwide team of volunteer programmers and linguists to standardize, evolve, and maintain a global software foundation that allows virtually every computer system and service to help people connect using their native language.

For additional information about Unicode, visit home.unicode.org.

Unicode Resources

• Unicode Technical Quick Start Guide: https://home.unicode.org/technical-quick-start-guide/
• Unicode YouTube Playlist - Overview of Internationalization and Unicode Projects: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMc927ywQmTNQrscw7yvaJbAbMJDIjeBh

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By Elango Cheran

On September 28th, Unicode held a webinar on the “Overview of Internationalization and Unicode Projects” for Unicode enthusiasts. More than 180 people across 30 countries joined us for this online event.

The Consortium is pleased to now make available the videos from this event. If you are new to Unicode and internationalization or want an overview of the most recent projects, check out our new YouTube playlist and Technical Quick Start Guide.

Our Technical Leadership and other experts provide a handy overview on such topics as:

• Introduction to Internationalization - Addison Phillips, Internationalization Engineer
  
• Unicode Consortium: Past, Present, and Future - Mark Davis, Cofounder and President
• Scripts and Character Encoding - Deborah Anderson, Chair of the Script Ad Hoc Committee
• Unicode CLDR (Common Locale Data Repository) - Mark Davis and Annemarie Apple, Chair and Vice Chair of the CLDR Committee
• Unicode ICU (International Components for Unicode) - Markus Scherer, Chair of ICU Committee
• Unicode ICU4X 2022 - Shane Carr, Chair of ICU4X Subcommittee

Also included in the playlist is the audience Q&A with Elango Charan, the webinar’s emcee,  and Mark Davis, Cofounder and President of Unicode.

The Unicode Technical Quick Start Guide is also now available. The guide explains what Unicode is, including answering the question, “What is Internationalization and Why it Matters.”  There is also an overview of the technical committees and useful links to more detailed information and how you can get involved.

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