Unicode Explained

• In a file that may specify different properties for characters, the abbreviation of a

property is given in one field, its value in another. For example, the following line

(from DerivedNormalizationProps.txt) says that for character U+037A, the value

of the property FC_NFKC is the two-character sequence U+0020 U+03B9:

037A ; FC_NFKC; 0020 03B9 # Lm GREEK YPOGEGRAMMENI

• In a file that specifies binary (yes/no) properties, the name of a property is given in

one field, without a value, implying a “yes” value (True) for the character. For such

properties, the value “no” (False) is implied for all characters that are not men-

tioned. For example, in the PropList.txt file, there are only the two lines quoted

below that mention the Bidi_Control property (comments omitted from this quo-

tation). This implies that for the two characters U+200E and U+200F and for the

five characters U+202A to U+202E, the value of the Bidi Control property is “yes”

(True), and for all other characters, it is “no” (False):

200E..200F ; Bidi_Control

202A..202E ; Bidi_Control

Compositions and Decompositions

The 10 design principles of Unicode, presented in Chapter 4, contain one principle on

dynamic composition and another principle on equivalent sequences. For example, the

letter é can be represented as a single Unicode character, or dynamically composed as

a two-character string (letter “e” followed by a combining