Font Tools

LibICU – libraries for Unicode and internationalization

ICU is a mature, widely used set of C/C++ and Java libraries providing Unicode and Globalization support for software applications. ICU is widely portable and gives applications the same results on all platforms and between C/C++ and Java software.

This is cross-platform software.

It’s published under an open source license.

Key Features

  • Code Page Conversion: Convert text data to or from Unicode and nearly any other character set or encoding. ICU’s conversion tables are based on charset data collected by IBM over the course of many decades, and is the most complete available anywhere.
  • Collation: Compare strings according to the conventions and standards of a particular language, region or country. ICU’s collation is based on the Unicode Collation Algorithm plus locale-specific comparison rules from the Common Locale Data Repository, a comprehensive source for this type of data.
  • Formatting: Format numbers, dates, times and currency amounts according the conventions of a chosen locale. This includes translating month and day names into the selected language, choosing appropriate abbreviations, ordering fields correctly, etc. This data also comes from the Common Locale Data Repository.
  • Time Calculations: Multiple types of calendars are provided beyond the traditional Gregorian calendar. A thorough set of timezone calculation APIs are provided.
  • Unicode Support: ICU closely tracks the Unicode standard, providing easy access to all of the many Unicode character properties, Unicode Normalization, Case Folding and other fundamental operations as specified by the Unicode Standard.
  • Regular Expression: ICU’s regular expressions fully support Unicode while providing very competitive performance.
  • Bidi: support for handling text containing a mixture of left to right (English) and right to left (Arabic or Hebrew) data.
  • Text Boundaries: Locate the positions of words, sentences, paragraphs within a range of text, or identify locations that would be suitable for line wrapping when displaying the text.

Website: icu.unicode.org
Support: GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Unicode Consortium
License: Unicode License

LibICU is written in C++ and Java. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn Java with our recommended free books and free tutorials.


Related Software

Font Tools
HarfBuzzOpenType text shaping engine
FreeTypeSmall and efficient software font engine
LibICULibraries for Unicode and internationalization
FontconfigLibrary for configuring and customizing font access
FriBidiImplementation of the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm

Read our verdict in the software roundup.


Best Free and Open Source Software Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.

This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk.

You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more.

Know a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form.
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments