Unicode Explained

Fundamentally, computers just deal with numbers. They store letters and other characters by assigning a number for each one. There are hundreds of different encoding systems for mapping characters to numbers, but Unicode promises a single mapping. Unicode enables a single software product or website to be targeted across multiple platforms, languages and countries without re-engineering. It's no wonder that industry giants like Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM andMicrosoft have all adopted Unicode. Containing everything you need to understand Unicode, this comprehensive reference from O'Reilly takes you on a detailed guide through the complex character world. For starters, it explains how to identify and classify characters - whether they're common, uncommon, or exotic. It then shows you how to type them, utilize their properties, and process character data in a robust manner. The book is broken up into three distinct parts. The first few chapters provide you with a tutorial presentation of Unicode and character data. It gives you a firm grasp of the terminology you need to reference various components, including character sets, fonts and encodings, glyphs and character repertoires. The middle section offers more detailed information about using Unicode and other character codes. It explains the principles and methods of defining character codes, describes some of the widely used codes, and presents code conversion techniques. It also discusses properties of characters, collation and sorting, line breaking rules and Unicode encodings. The final four chapters cover more advanced material, such as programming to support Unicode. You simply can't afford to be without the nuggets of valuable information detailed in Unicode Explained.

Unicode is a critical enabling technology for developers who want to internationalize applications for global environments. But, until now, developers have had to turn to standards documents for crucial information on utilizing Unicode. In Unicode Demystified, one of IBM's leading software internationalization experts covers every key aspect of Unicode development, offering practical examples and detailed guidance for integrating Unicode 3.0 into virtually any application or environment. Writing from a developer's point of view, Rich Gillam presents a systematic introduction to Unicode's goals, evolution, and key elements. Gillam illuminates the Unicode standards documents with insightful discussions of character properties, the Unicode character database, storage formats, character sequences, Unicode normalization, character encoding conversion, and more. He presents practical techniques for text processing, locating text boundaries, searching, sorting, rendering text, accepting user input, and other key development tasks. Along the way, he offers specific guidance on integrating Unicode with other technologies, including Java, JavaScript, XML, and the Web. For every developer building internationalized applications, internationalizing existing applications, or interfacing with systems that already utilize Unicode.

At last, here’s an approachable introduction to the widely used Portable Document Format. PDFs are everywhere, both online and in printed form, but few people take advantage of the useful features or grasp the nuances of this format. This concise book provides a hands-on tour of the world’s leading page-description language for programmers, power users, and professionals in the search, electronic publishing, and printing industries. Illustrated with lots of examples, this book is the documentation you need to fully understand PDF. Build a simple PDF file from scratch in a text editor Learn the layout and content of a PDF file, as well as the syntax of its objects Examine the logical structure of PDF objects, and learn how pages and their resources are arranged into a document Create vector graphics and raster images in PDF, and deal with transparency, color spaces, and patterns Explore PDF operators for building and showing text strings Get up to speed on bookmarks, metadata, hyperlinks, annotations, and file attachments Learn how encryption and document permissions work in PDF Use the pdftk program to process PDF files from the command line

"Though there are many books about the history of the alphabet, virtually none address how that history came to be. In Inventing the Alphabet, Johanna Drucker guides readers from antiquity to the present to show how humans have shaped and reshaped their own understanding of this transformative writing tool. From ancient beliefs in the alphabet as a divine gift to growing awareness of its empirical origins through the study of scripts and inscriptions, Drucker describes the frameworks-classical, textual, biblical, graphical, antiquarian, archaeological, paleographic, and political-within which the alphabet's history has been and continues to be constructed. Drucker's book begins in ancient Greece, with the earliest writings on the alphabet's origins. She then explores biblical sources on the topic and medieval preoccupations with the magical properties of individual letters. She later delves into the development of modern archaeological and paleographic tools, and she concludes with the role of alphabetic characters in the digital era. Throughout, she argues that, as a shared form of knowledge technology integrated into every aspect of our lives, the alphabet performs complex cultural, ideological, and technical functions, and her carefully curated selection of images demonstrates how closely the letters we use today still resemble their original appearance millennia ago"--

Don't waste time bending Python to fit patterns you've learned in other languages. Python's simplicity lets you become productive quickly, but often this means you aren't using everything the language has to offer. With the updated edition of this hands-on guide, you'll learn how to write effective, modern Python 3 code by leveraging its best ideas. Discover and apply idiomatic Python 3 features beyond your past experience. Author Luciano Ramalho guides you through Python's core language features and libraries and teaches you how to make your code shorter, faster, and more readable. Complete with major updates throughout, this new edition features five parts that work as five short books within the book: Data structures: Sequences, dicts, sets, Unicode, and data classes Functions as objects: First-class functions, related design patterns, and type hints in function declarations Object-oriented idioms: Composition, inheritance, mixins, interfaces, operator overloading, protocols, and more static types Control flow: Context managers, generators, coroutines, async/await, and thread/process pools Metaprogramming: Properties, attribute descriptors, class decorators, and new class metaprogramming hooks that replace or simplify metaclasses

Directory services matter to nearly every organization because they help centrally manage information and thereby reduce the costs of computing services. LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is a set of protocols that have become the internet standard for accessing directories. Many people need to understand directory services and LDAP in order to make decisions for their business. The books currently available are too advanced for technical managers and those new to directory services. This book is designed to fill that need. The author spends the first half of the book exploring how directory services and LDAP work and then the second half discussing the most popular implementations - OpenLDAP, Microsoft Active Directory, and Directory Server - for those who are trying to compare products. This book provides the technical foundation that will enable IT managers to make sound business decisions and developers to move on to more advanced books.

The First Expert Guide to Static Analysis for Software Security! Creating secure code requires more than just good intentions. Programmers need to know that their code will be safe in an almost infinite number of scenarios and configurations. Static source code analysis gives users the ability to review their work with a fine-toothed comb and uncover the kinds of errors that lead directly to security vulnerabilities. Now, there’s a complete guide to static analysis: how it works, how to integrate it into the software development processes, and how to make the most of it during security code review. Static analysis experts Brian Chess and Jacob West look at the most common types of security defects that occur today. They illustrate main points using Java and C code examples taken from real-world security incidents, showing how coding errors are exploited, how they could have been prevented, and how static analysis can rapidly uncover similar mistakes. This book is for everyone concerned with building more secure software: developers, security engineers, analysts, and testers.