PD 6581:1993

Committees responsible
National foreword
1 Scope
2 Conformance
3 Normative references
4 Definitions
5 General structure of the UCS
6 Basic structure and nomenclature
7 Special features of the UCS
8 The Basic Multilingual Plane
9 Other planes
10 The Restricted Use zone
11 Private Use groups and planes
12 Revision and updating of the UCS
13 Subsets
14 Coded representation forms of the UCS
15 Implementation levels
16 Use of control functions with the UCS
17 Declaration of identification of features
18 Structure of the code tables and lists
19 Block names
20 Characters in bi-directional context
21 Special characters
22 Order of characters
23 Combining characters
24 Hangul syllable composition method
25 Code tables and lists of character names
Annexes
A Collections of graphic characters for subsets
B List of combining characters
C Mirrored characters in Arabic bi-directional context
D Alternate format characters
E Alphabetically sorted list of character names
F The use of 'signatures' to identify UCS
G UCS transformation format (UTF-1)
H Recommendation for combined receiving/originating
    devices with internal storage
J Notations of octet value representations
K Character naming guidelines
L Sources of characters
M External references to character repertoires
N Scripts under consideration for future editions of
    ISO/IEC 10646

ISO/IEC 10646 specifies the Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS). It is applicable to the representation, transmission, interchange, processing, storage, input and presentation of the written form of the languages of the world as well as additional symbols.

This part of ISO/IEC 10646 specifies the overall architecture, and

• defines terms used in ISO/IEC 10646;
• describes the general structure of the coded character set;
• specifies the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP) of the UCS, and defines a set of graphic characters used in scripts and the written form of languages on a world-wide scale;
• specifies the names for the graphic characters of the BMP, and the coded representations;
• specifies the four-octet (32-bit) canonical form of the UCS: UCS-4;
• specifies a two-octet (16-bit) BMP form of the UCS: UCS-2;
• specifies the coded representations for control functions;
• specifies the management of future additions to this coded character set.

The UCS is a coding system different from that specified in ISO 2022. The method to designate UCS from ISO 2022 is specified in 17.2.