ICU 4.4

All

• • Unicode 5.2

  • CLDR 1.8

  • More compact data formats

  • ICU4J modularization

Apple

Tier 1

• Regex using abstract text access APIs (UText), roll in work by Jordan Rose: #4521 (ensure perf OK, ensure UTF8 support)

• Ensure that there are APIs providing access to all CLDR data: e.g. #4836, #5478, etc. (Google also interested) (Peter has CLDR task to enumerate the data that is missing; based on that we can file additional bugs and divide up the work)

• Improved search capabilities (Peter to generate design doc) - mainly asymmetric search, i.e. type e, match e,é,è; type é, match é but probably not e and certainly not è (#7093) (Google also interested). Other possibilities (lower priority) include:

  • Position-dependent matching? (e.g. Arabic HEH and TEH MARBUTA should match for a search when both are at the end of a word)

  • Use of search object distinct from collator? (Possible optimization, may not be necessary, not of interest to others)

• Reduce ICU4C dynamically-allocated memory, especially for time zone data (more compact data formats may help with this): #6873, #6879 (Google also interested) (Peter will look at porting Yoshito's ICU4J work to C; requires interpreting const in a "logical" way - can do lazy loading, just make sure thread safe. Should document this interpretation. Peter to coordinate with Andy on this)

Tier 2

• • Number spellout format & parse support for CJK numbers, including in dates. Note: CLDR 1.7 added relevant capability per cldrbug:1927; is there anything else that needs to be done in ICU (may work if appropriate patterns are used, Peter will do some experiments)

  • Support >2GB text length for search, regex, text break, encoding conversion, perhaps transliteration. Use of UText will provide appropriate interfaces for regex and RBBI with additional internal changes. #5451 is for the RBBI changes.

  • Encoding detection for a wider range of encodings, with some finer distinctions. For example pure ShiftJIS text should return both ShiftJIS and cp932 with 100% confidence; text including cp932 extensions should also return both but with lower confidence for ShiftJIS.

  • Additional conversion tables (not necessarily in default build). Don't need a ticket for this yet.

Already implemented on branch

• • Lenient parsing for numbers (#4942, #6109), date/time (#3579)

Google

Tier 1

• • General

    • Spoof detection in ICU4J (#7094) (IBM has also expressed interest)

    • Complete BCP47 Support (6177, 6916, 6791, 6860)

    • Switch data formats to use UTrie2— requires UTrie2 in ICU4J as well (#7077)

    • (apple) Provide APIs to access all CLDR data #4836, #5478

    • Fully customizable data for objects, formatters, and others; there are holes

  • Normalization/IDNA

    • Support custom normalization data (#7273)

    • Support UTS #46 (#7144) [via custom normalization data]

  • Formatting

    • Able to select numbering systems (#7160)

    • BigDecimal format/parse in ICU4C (#5193)

  • Footprint

    • Split locale display names, time zone names, currency names out of locale data (into separate data) (#7163)

    • Introduce Locale base class — only id, no display names (#7164)

    • Introduce MessageFormat base class — only string substitution (#7165)

    • Smaller "core" set (without formatting data, only manipulation/algorithms) (#7161)

    • Generalized cache management for ICU4C (#2863, #3035, #3118, #6029, #6030, #6031, #6099, #6708)

    • More compact collation (rules/binary) data

      • Compact collation tailoring syntax for lists of characters with same level difference (#7015)

      • Add import rule to collation tailoring syntax (#7023, CldrBug:2268)

    • Locale data filtering: display names for fewer codes

    • (apple) Reduce C heap memory usage, especially for time zone #6873, #6879

Tier 2

• • General

    • Collation script reordering (#3984, CldrBug:2267)

    • Best match for locale IDs: #4712

    • Better C++ implementation (scoped_ptr, byte string class; see design/C++ page) (#7162)

    • Cast reduction — move methods into base

  • Formatting

    • Day divisions — more than just am/pm, e.g. Chinese 'noon', 'midnight' (#7150, CLDR#713)(Apple also interested in this; Peter has a CLDR bug)

    • More kinds of duration formatting (Apple also interested in this; Peter has a CLDR bug)

  • Footprint

    • Filter out locales with insufficient data

IBM

• General focus: Usability, Maintainability and Performance

  • Code and Data Maintainability Improvements, e.g. Separating timezone data from code.

  • Overriding/updating locale information in an ICU installation: 4597 6633

  • Collation and string search service code clean up: 4562

  • Misc layout bug fixes: 5589 6625 5431 6113 6182

  • Improved ICU performance and regression for selected service areas only, e.g. Collation

  • Extended IETF BCP47 support: language/locale specification for HTTP/XML/OpenJDK

  • Lenient parsing, e.g. DateFormat. (Already implemented by Apple on branch)

  • Locale service SPI

  • JSR-310 Date and Time APIs

  • @provider multiple version support, Calling old ICU service code through new ICU API

  • Java 5 migration (ICU4J)

  • Supporting generics to match JDK APIs

  • ICU 4.4 will no longer support Java 1.4 or older versions

  • Java Logging support (ICU4J)

  • ICU Resource Bundle footprint optimization