The tutorial will provide you with an understanding of key requirements for implementing writing systems in information technology. It will do this by examining real examples of a wide range of modern scripts to discover features that a computerized implementation must support. It will also make special reference, where appropriate, to how the Unicode Standard points the way forward for meeting these requirements.

The tutorial does not provide detailed coding advice, but does provide the essential background information you need to understand the fundamental issues. It will also constitute an excellent orientation for newcomers to the topic, providing a wide-ranging framework that assists in assimilating further, more detailed and specific information.

Naturally, given the tutorial format this is an ambitious approach, and it will mean that we cannot go into great detail on any particular topic. If you would like to understand a topic better, there are a couple of excellent resources cited at the end of the tutorial, one of which is the very readable Unicode Standard itself.

How to use this material

This material is organized around a set of presentation slides which can be viewed in several ways. Each view is identified by an icon as described below.

All in one A single page containing all explanatory text followed by small accompanying slides.

Slide by slide One page per slide view. This is particularly useful if you need to see the detail on a slide.

SVG slides This page by page version of the slides is provided mainly for those who want to cut and paste the text on the slides. If you have the appropriate fonts and rendering software you may be able to use this view for presenting the material, but there may be glyches in the text.

Please send any comments to ishida@w3.org.