A Proposed Draft Unicode Technical Report published by the Unicode Consortium earlier in 2002 has been advanced to an approved version 3.2 of the Unicode Standard. This edition of the Standard "includes the most extensive set of characters for mathematical and technical publishing yet defined. The Unicode Technical Committee and the Scientific and Technical Information eXchange (STIX) Project of the Scientific and Technical Publishers (STIPub) Consortium worked together over the past 5 years to identify over 1,600 new mathematical symbols and alphanumeric characters, more than doubling the number of characters with mathematical usage previously available. W3C's MathML integrates with developing Web technologies, and makes essential use of the Unicode character set. With the addition of four indigenous scripts of the Philippines, the Unicode Standard moves further towards full coverage of all living writing systems; version 3.2 is now fully synchronized with International Standard ISO/IEC 10646-1:2000, with its Amendment 1, and with ISO/IEC 10646-2:2001. The Unicode Standard is a major component in the globalization of e-business, as the marketplace continues to demand technologies that enhance seamless data interchange throughout companies' extended -- and often international -- network of suppliers, customers and partners. Unicode is the default text representation in XML, an important open standard being rapidly adopted throughout e-business technology."

Bibliographic information: Unicode 3.2. Unicode Standard Annex #28. By: Members of the Unicode Consortium Editorial Committee. Version: Unicode 3.2.0. Date: 2002-03-27. Version URL: http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr28/tr28-3. Latest Version URL: http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr28. The Unicode Standard, Version 3.2.0 is defined by The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0 (Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley, 2000. ISBN 0-201-61633-5), as amended by the Unicode Standard Annex #27: Unicode 3.1 and by the Unicode Standard Annex #28: Unicode 3.2.

From the specification:

"The primary feature of Unicode 3.2 is the addition of 1016 new encoded characters. These additions consist of several Philippine scripts, a large collection of mathematical symbols, and small sets of other letters and symbols. All of the newly encoded characters in Unicode 3.2 are additions to the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP). .. Most notable among the corrigenda to the Standard is a further tightening of the definition of UTF-8, to eliminate irregular UTF-8 and to bring the Unicode specification of UTF-8 more completely into line with other specifications of UTF-8."

Math: "In addition to the symbols in these blocks, mathematical and scientific notation makes frequent use of arrows, punctuation characters, letterlike symbols, geometrical shapes and other miscellaneous and technical symbols... The Unicode Standard defines a number of additional blocks to supplement the repertoire of mathematical operators and arrows. These additions are intended to extend the Unicode repertoire sufficiently to cover the needs of such applications as MathML, modern mathematical formula editing and presentation software, and symbolic algebra systems... MathML, an XML application, is intended to support the full legacy collection of the ISO mathematical entity sets. Accordingly, the repertoire of mathematical symbols for the Unicode Standard has been supplemented by the full list of mathematical entity sets in ISO TR 9573-13, Public entity sets for mathematics and science. Additional repertoire was provided from the amalgamated collection of the STIX Project (Scientific and Technical Information Exchange). That collection includes, but is not limited to, symbols gleaned from mathematical publications by experts of the American Mathematical Society and symbol sets provided by Elsevier Publishing and by the American Physical Society."

Philippine Scripts (Tagalog, Hanunóo, Buhid, Tagbanwa). The first of these four scripts, Tagalog, is no longer used, although the other three, Hanunóo, Buhid, and Tagbanwa, are living scripts of the Philippines. South Indian scripts of the Pallava dynasty made their way to the Philippines, although the exact route is uncertain. They may have been transported by way of the Kavi scripts of Western Java between the 10th and 14th centuries CE. There are written accounts of the Tagalog script by Spanish missionaries, and documents in Tagalog dating from the mid-1500s. The first book in this script was printed in Manila in 1593. While the Tagalog script was used to write Tagalog, Bisaya, Ilocano, and other languages, it fell out of normal use by the mid-1700s; modern Tagalog language is now written in the Latin script..."

From the announcement:

Barbara Beeton, Composition Systems Staff Specialist at the American Mathematical Society played a pivotal role in the project. Commenting on the release of Version 3.2, Ms. Beeton says: "The correct display of mathematical notation has always been troublesome, and the problems have only increased with the advent of electronic distribution of mathematical information. The resources provided in Unicode 3.2 are an essential first step in making technical communication reliable in the electronic age."

"To facilitate better communication of science and technology the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has adopted MathML 2.0, the markup language for mathematics," says Patrick Ion, W3C Math Working Group Chair. "MathML integrates with developing Web technologies, and makes essential use of the Unicode character set. The W3C enthusiastically welcomes the publication of Unicode 3.2, with its considerably enhanced support for the symbols of mathematics and science, and is pleased to have contributed to its development."