The week before last, the Unicode Consortium which manages standards for Unicode and Locale published the 6.0 version of Unicode to their site. These standards represent the common set of symbols and locales software vendors use to internationalize their solutions. Over time, the Unicode Standard set of characters has grown in size from 28,294 assigned graphic and format characters in Version 1.0, to 109,384 characters in Version 6.0. This release represents the first time the full specification has been published online in its entirety. The new blocks in version 6.0.0 are: 0840..085F Mandaic 1BC0..1BFF Batak AB00..AB2F Ethiopic Extended-A 11000..1107F Brahmi 16800..16A3F Bamum Supplement 1B000..1B0FF Kana Supplement 1F0A0..1F0FF Playing Cards 1F300..1F5FF Miscellaneous Symbols And Pictographs 1F600..1F64F Emoticons 1F680..1F6FF Transport And Map Symbols 1F700..1F77F Alchemical Symbols 2B740..2B81F CJK Unified Ideographs Extension D Specifically added: 2,088 characters, including over 1,000 additional symbols which are especially important for mobile phones the new official Indian currency symbol: the Indian Rupee Sign 222 additional CJK Unified Ideographs in common use in China, Taiwan, and Japan 603 additional characters for African language support, including extensions to the Tifinagh, Ethiopic, and Bamum scripts three additional scripts: Mandaic, Batak, and Brahmi

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