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Software requirements for different levels of Unicode Support

Lorna A. Priest, 2009-11-30

This page provides information on levels of Unicode support provided by different software applications.

See Applications that provide an adequate level of support for SIL Unicode Roman fonts for more information about the level of smart font support in various applications.

Sample Windows Configurations

See Applications and Levels of Unicode Support for more detailed information about various applications.

See Uniscribe versions for more information about Uniscribe.

Application		Unicode input with Keyman	Unicode input with MSKLC or MS built-in keyboards or IMEs	RTL scripts	Complex Latin
Windows 7
	Office 2007	Y	Y	Y	Y
	Office 2003	Y	Y	Y	Y
	SIL FieldWorks 6.0+	Y	Y	Y	Y
	Paratext 6.1+	Y	N (except for characters in the system code page)	Y	Y
	Toolbox 1.5.5+ (The Field Linguist’s Toolbox)	Y	Y for Toolbox 1.5, N for earlier versions (except for characters in the system code page)	Y (if a codepage exists for that writing system)	Uses Uniscribe, so if your version of Uniscribe supports complex Latin, then Yes
Windows Vista
	Office 2007	Y	Y	Y	Y
	Office 2003	Y	Y	Y	Y
	Office XP	Y	Y	Y	Y
	Office 2000	Y	Unknown	Y	Y
	SIL FieldWorks 4.2+(FLEx)	Y	Y	Y	Y
	Paratext 6.1+	Y	N (except for characters in the system code page)	Y	Y
	Toolbox 1.5.1+ (The Field Linguist’s Toolbox)	Y	Y for Toolbox 1.5, N for earlier versions (except for characters in the system code page)	Y (if a codepage exists for that writing system)	Uses Uniscribe, so if your version of Uniscribe supports complex Latin, then Yes
Windows XP
	Microsoft Word 2003	Y	Y	Y	Y
	Microsoft Word XP	Y	Y	Y	N, unless you replace your version of Uniscribe
	Microsoft Word 2000	Y	Unknown	Y	N (unless you replace your version of Uniscribe)
	Microsoft Word 97	Y	Unknown	Unknown	N
	WorldPad	Y	Y	Y	Y
	Paratext 6	Y	N (except for characters in the system code page)	Y	Y
	Toolbox (The Field Linguist’s Toolbox)	Y	Y for Toolbox 1.5, N for earlier versions (except for characters in the system code page)	Y (if a codepage exists for that writing system)	Uses Uniscribe, so if your version of Uniscribe supports complex Latin, then Yes
Windows 2000
	Microsoft Word 2003 (Windows 2000 must have SP3, or later, installed)	Y	Unknown	Unknown	Y
	Microsoft Word XP	Y	Y	Y	N (unless you replace your version of Uniscribe)
	Microsoft Word 2000	Y for Plane 0 only	Unknown	Y	N (unless you replace your version of Uniscribe, then limited support)
	Microsoft Word 97	Y for Plane 0 only	Unknown	Unknown	N
	WorldPad	Y	Y	Y	Y
	Paratext 6	Y	N (except for characters in the system code page)	Y	Y
	Toolbox (The Field Linguist’s Toolbox)	Y	Y for Toolbox 1.5, N for earlier versions (except for characters in the system code page)	Y (if a codepage exists for that writing system)	Uses Uniscribe, so if your version of Uniscribe supports complex Latin, then Yes
Windows NT 4
	Microsoft Word XP (NT must have SP6a installed)	Y	N	Unknown	N (unless you replace your version of Uniscribe)
	Microsoft Word 2000 (NT must have SP3, or later, installed)	Y, for Plane 0 only	N	N (unless your OS contains language support for the language that you want to use)	N (unless you replace your version of Uniscribe)
	Microsoft Word 97 (NT must have SP2, or later, installed)	Y, for Plane 0 only	N	N (unless you have a right-to-left version of Microsoft Word 97 (Arabic or Hebrew))	N
	Paratext 6	Y	N (except for characters in the system code page)	Y	Y
Windows Me
	Microsoft Word XP	Y (with Wordlink Add-in)	N	Unknown	N (unless you replace your version of Uniscribe)
	Microsoft Word 2000	Y (with Wordlink Add-in) for Plane 0 only	N	N (unless your OS contains language support for the language that you want to use)	N (unless you replace your version of Uniscribe, then limited)
	Microsoft Word 97	Y (with Wordlink Add-in) for Plane 0 only	N	N (unless you have a right-to-left version of Microsoft Word 97 (Arabic or Hebrew))	N
	Paratext 6	Y	N (except for characters in the system code page)	Y	Y
	Toolbox (The Field Linguist’s Toolbox)	Y	N (except for characters in the system code page)	Y (if a codepage exists for that writing system)	Uses Uniscribe, so if your version of Uniscribe supports complex Latin, then Yes
Windows 98
	Microsoft Word XP	Y (with Wordlink Add-in)	N	Unknown	N
	Microsoft Word 2000	Y (with Wordlink Add-in) for Plane 0 only	N	N (unless your OS contains language support for the language that you want to use or by installing IE5.5 or later)	N
	Microsoft Word 97	Y (with Wordlink Add-in) for Plane 0 only	N	N (unless you have a right-to-left version of Microsoft Word 97 (Arabic or Hebrew))	N
	Paratext 6 (Windows 98SE)	Y	N (except for characters in the system code page)	Y	Y
	Toolbox (The Field Linguist’s Toolbox)	Y	N (except for characters in the system code page)	Y (if a codepage exists for that writing system)	Uses Uniscribe, so if your version of Uniscribe supports complex Latin, then Yes
Windows 95
	Microsoft Word 2000	Y (with Wordlink Add-in) for Plane 0 only	N	N (unless your OS contains language support for the language that you want to use or by installing IE5.5 or later)	N
	Microsoft Word 97	Y (with Wordlink Add-in) for Plane 0 only	N	N (unless you have a right-to-left version of Microsoft Word 97 (Arabic or Hebrew))	N
	Toolbox (The Field Linguist’s Toolbox)	Y	N (except for characters in the system code page)	Y (if a codepage exists for that writing system)	Uses Uniscribe, so if your version of Uniscribe supports complex Latin, then Yes

Applications and Levels of Unicode Support

Operating Systems

Application	Level of Unicode Support	Cost	Hardware Requirements
Windows 7	Supports Unicode 5.1. Supports BMP and Supplementary planes.		1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor, 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit), 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit). For more info, see  http://www.microsoft.com/windows
Windows Vista	Supports Unicode 5.0. Supports BMP and Supplementary planes.		1-gigahertz (GHz) 32-bit (x86) processor or 1-GHz 64-bit (x64) processor, 1 GB of system memory, Windows Aero-capable graphics card,128 MB of graphics memory (minimum), 40-GB hard disk that has 15 GB of free hard disk space, Internal or external DVD drive, Internet access capability, Audio output capability. For more info, see  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919183
Windows XP	Supports BMP and Supplementary planes.		Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended), at least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended), at least 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available space on the hard disk
Windows 2000	Supports BMP and Supplementary planes.		133 MHz or higher Pentium-compatible CPU, at least 128 megabytes (MB) of RAM (256 MB of RAM recommended). Hard Disk 2 GB with 1 GB free space.
Windows NT 4	Unicode is the native code set of Windows NT, but the Win32 subsystem provides both ANSI and Unicode support. See also  Unicode and Microsoft Windows NT		486/33 megahertz (MHz) or higher, or Pentium, or Pentium PRO processor. 125 megabyte (MB) of available hard disk space minimum.
Windows Me	Very limited Unicode (BMP) support. Keyman improves on this support by including the WM_UNICHAR message which allows conformant applications, such as the new RichEdit control Microsoft is including with Office XP, to accept Unicode input. See also  INFO: Unicode Support in Windows 95 and Windows 98.		Pentium 150-MHz processor or better. 32 megabytes (MB) of RAM or better. Minimum 320 MB of free hard-disk space.
Windows 98	Very limited Unicode (BMP) support. Keyman improves on this support by including the WM_UNICHAR message which allows conformant applications, such as the new RichEdit control Microsoft is including with Office XP, to accept Unicode input. See also  INFO: Unicode Support in Windows 95 and Windows 98.		486DX 66 megahertz (MHz) or faster processor (Pentium central processing unit recommended). 16 megabytes (MB) of memory (24 MB recommended). Hard disk space may range from between 120 MB and 355 MB, depending on your computer configuration and the options that you choose to install.
Windows 95	Very limited Unicode (BMP) support. Keyman improves on this support by including the WM_UNICHAR message which allows conformant applications, such as the new RichEdit control Microsoft is including with Office XP, to accept Unicode input. See also  INFO: Unicode Support in Windows 95 and Windows 98. It will be necessary to upgrade both OS and hardware to do anything useful with Unicode-encoded data.		386DX or higher processor (486 recommended). 4 megabytes (MB) of memory (8 MB recommended). Hard disk space required 35-55 MB The actual requirement varies depending on the features you choose to install.
MacOS X	Supports Unicode 4.0.		Macintosh computer with a PowerPC G3, G4 or G5 processor. Built-in FireWire. 256MB of RAM. 3GB of available hard disk space (4GB if you install the developer tools).
MacOS 9	Limited Unicode support.		Mac OS-based Apple computer with a PowerPC processor. 150 MB to 400 MB, depending on options selected, and drive size and format. 40 MB of RAM (32 MB of physical RAM, with virtual memory set to at least 40 MB).
Suse Linux	Default encoding: UTF-8	free	At least 384 MB RAM
Red Hat Linux 8.0	Full Unicode/UTF-8 support	free	At least 256 MB RAM
Linux Fedora		free	At least 256 MB RAM
Linux Debian		free	At least 256 MB RAM
Mandriva Linux (formerly known as Mandrakelinux)		free	At least 256 MB RAM
Ubuntu Linux	Default UTF-8 Support.	free	At least 128 MB RAM, 2 gigabytes hard drive

Keyboarding

See also: Some tools and resources for character input.

Application	Level of Unicode Support	Cost	Operating System	Software Dependencies
*** Item not found: 'https://keyman.com'	Keyman keyboards support input and output of any of the thousands of characters defined in Unicode, including characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane which are encoded with surrogate pairs.		MS Win 7/8/10.
Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC) A tool for creating keyboard layouts. MSKLC does not allow for arbitrarily long input sequences and to have diacritics typed after the base character.	Input of virtually any character in Unicode is possible. See also Comparing Keyman and Microsoft Windows Keyboard Layout Creator.	free	Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 or Windows Vista (MSKLC will not run on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME or Windows NT4).	Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 or   Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 must be installed.
Ukelele John Brownie, 2019-09-05 Ukelele is a Unicode keyboard layout editor for Mac OS X versions 10.2 and later. The latest beta release version, 3.4b2, is available for download, and can be used on Mac OS X 10.9 and later. The previous stable releases of Ukelele, version 3.3 (for macOS 10.9 and later), version 3.2.7 (for Mac OS X 10.8 and later), version 2.2.8 (universal binary, for Mac OS 10.4 and later) and version 1.8.4 (universal binary, for Mac OS X 10.2 and later) are still available for download. This version works on Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) and later.	Correctly displays characters in the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP) as well as out of the BMP (i.e. code points greater than U+FFFF)	free	Mac OS X versions 10.2 and later
KeyLayoutMaker: Jonathan Kew, 2006-06-01 KeyLayoutMaker is a Perl script designed to create Mac OS X keyboard layout files, based on simple lists of keystrokes and required Unicode characters. It is particularly suited to creating layouts for syllabic scripts.	Supplementary-plane characters are converted to UTF-16 surrogate pairs, as expected by the Mac OS X text system.	free	Mac OS X	Perl

Encoding Conversion

See also: Conversion Utilities.

Application	Level of Unicode Support	Cost	Operating System	Software Dependencies
SILConverters 4.0 Bob Eaton, Mark Penny, 2015-08-14 This package provides tools through which you can change the encoding, font, and/or script of text in Microsoft Word and other Office documents, XML documents, and SFM text and lexicon documents. It also installs a system-wide repository to manage your encoding converters and transliterators (TECkit, CC, ICU, Perl, or Python-based, as well as support for adding custom transduction engines).	Supports BMP and Supplementary planes.	free	MS Windows 2000/XP	Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0, MS Word XP or newer,  CC, TECkit,  ICU. Fully integrated with  SIL FieldWorks.
TECkit Jonathan Kew, Bobby de Vos, 2020-05-13 The latest release of TECkit adds support for Unicode version 13. TECkit is a low-level toolkit intended to be used by other applications that need to perform encoding conversions (e.g., when importing legacy data into a Unicode-based application).	Supports BMP and Supplementary planes.	free	MS Windows, MacOS X, MacOS 8/9
Encore2Unicode utility — a command-line utility for Windows that can examine a font built using the Encore font system and create a draft TECkit mapping table for converting data using that font to (and back from) Unicode.	Supports up to Unicode 5.1	free	Windows	Will not work with any other fonts than those built using the Encore font system, version 3.
Consistent Changes is useful for finding all occurrences of specified characters, words, or phrases in a text file or series of text files, and then changing them in a consistent way. The change may be done in every occurrence found or only when certain are met. CC is like the find-and-replace feature in a text editor, but much more powerful because it allows you to make changes which take context into consideration and to make a whole set of changes at once. Beyond the search and replace feature, CC can also be used to count items (characters, words, or phrases), insert or remove text, or reorder parts of a text file.	UTF-8	free	Windows, Macintosh, MS-DOS

Text Editors

Application	Level of Unicode Support	Cost	Operating System
Notepad++	Has an option to make a file UTF-8 with no BOM under the format menu. Good options for encoding conversions.	Open source, free	Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP
Vim/gvim	Vim supports editing Unicode in the GUI version and in terminals that support UTF-8. Double-wide characters can be used, and up to two composing characters are supported. When reading a file, Vim can often detect how it is encoded and convert the text when necessary. UTF-8 files are edited without conversion. Other Unicode formats (16 bit and 32 bit) are converted internally. Conversion is also used to edit files in just about any encoding, using an external converter.	charityware	Unix, Windows, Macintosh
Komodo Edit	It handles syntax highlighting for several languages, and has options to set the encoding of a file, with or without a BOM.	free	Windows 2000/XP/Vista, Mac OS 10.3+, Linux
UltraEdit-32	Supports Unicode input from Keyman (under all the operating systems Keyman works with) using WM_UNICHAR. UltraEdit provides facilities for switching between encoding forms (UTF-8/UTF-16 etc.)	$39.95+	Win32
EmEditor	Full Unicode support. Supports Unicode input from Keyman (under all the operating systems Keyman works with) using WM_UNICHAR.	$29.99+	Windows 2000/XP/Vista
EmEditor Free	Full Unicode support. Supports Unicode input from Keyman (under all the operating systems Keyman works with) using WM_UNICHAR.	free	Windows 2000/XP/Vista
BabelPad	Supports UTF-8, UTF-16 or UTF-32 (auto-detect or user-specified). Supports Unicode 4.1.0. Supports the proper rendering of most complex scripts.	free	Windows 95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP
Mined 2000	It has both extensive Unicode and CJK support offering many specific features and covering special cases that other editors are not aware of (like auto-detection features and automatic handling of terminal variations, or Han character information).	free ( GNU Public License)	Unix/Linux
Yudit	Default encoding is UTF-8, but it can also work with UTF-7, UTF-16 and some non-Unicode character sets.	freeware	Unix/Linux and Windows
SC UniPad	Unicode formats UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32, UTF-7. Supports Unicode standard 4.1	free	Windows NT®, Windows 2000®, Windows 9x®, Windows ME® and Windows XP®
SciTE Text Editor	UTF-8, UTF-16 (You can set which encoding you want to use for the file, whether UTF-8 has a BOM or not, etc.)	Open source, free	Win32 and Linux
Programmer's Notepad	UTF-8, UTF-16 (does pretty good at auto-detecting utf8 files without BOM. It supports any TTF font, code highlighting, folding, regular expressions and full PCRE is on the roadmap for an upcoming release.)	Open source, free	Win32
SuperEdi	UTF-8, UTF-16	Free	Win32
JEdit	UTF-8, UTF-16	Open source, free	Mac OS X, Win32, Linux
UniRed	UTF-8, UTF-16	Open source, free	Win32

Word Processors

Application	Level of Unicode Support	Cost	Operating System
Microsoft Office 97	Supports BMP. Supports Unicode input with Keyman and the WordLink add-in		Microsoft Windows 95/98 or later, Microsoft Windows NT 3.51 Service Pack 5 or later, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 2 or later
Microsoft Office 2000	Supports BMP.		Microsoft Windows 95/98/Me/NT 4.0 (with Service Pack 3 or later)/2000/XP
Microsoft Office XP	Supports BMP and Supplementary planes.		Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me), Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 6.0a (SP6a)
Microsoft Office 2003	Supports BMP and Supplementary planes. Supports stacking diacritics for Latin.		Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or a later version, Microsoft Windows XP or a later version, Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) or a later version, Microsoft Windows Vista
Microsoft Office 2007	Supports up to Unicode 5.0. Supports stacking diacritics for Latin.		Windows XP/Vista
WordPad/Write	Recent versions of WordPad (specifically, the “RichEdit‎”‎ control) support Unicode input in all operating systems, using Keyman. The RichEdit control must be version 3.0 or later. Older versions support Unicode plane 0 input under Windows NT, 2000.1	comes with Windows OS	MS Windows
WorldPad	Supports BMP, Supplementary planes and Private Use Area. Uses UTF-16 internally.	free	MS Windows 2000/XP
OpenOffice Writer	Supports BMP and at least elementary support for Supplementary planes. Support for bidi and vertical writing. A beta version (for Linux and Windows) is available that enables OO to use Graphite for displaying non-Roman text.	OpenOffice.org uses a dual-licensing scheme for source-code contributions: the  LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License) and  SISSL (Sun Industry Standards Source License).	Solaris, Linux (including PPC Linux), Windows, Mac OS X (X11)
Mellel	Full Unicode support, including RTL.	US $39 or US $29 (education)	Mac OS X 10.4
AbiWord	UTF-8	freeware (available for use under the terms of the  GNU General Public License)	Available for several versions of Unix, for 32-bit Windows platforms, and in Mac OSX.

Publishing

Application	Level of Unicode Support	Cost	Operating System
Adobe InDesign	UTF-16	See  Adobe's store	Microsoft® Windows® 2000 (SP 3) or Windows XP, Mac OS X v.10.2.8 through 10.3.8
The XeTeX typesetting system	UTF-16	free	MacOS X 10.3.x, Linux and Microsoft Windows
Scribus	Unicode support including support for right to left scripts.	free	Linux, Mac OSX, Windows (beta)
Microsoft Publisher 2003	Supports BMP and Supplementary planes. Supports stacking diacritics for Latin.		Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or a later version, Microsoft Windows XP or a later version, Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) or a later version
Microsoft Publisher 2002	Supports BMP and Supplementary planes.		Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me), Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 6.0a (SP6a)
Microsoft Publisher 2000	Relies on the operating system to manipulate text, so this is somewhat dependent on what your OS is		Microsoft Windows 95/98/Me, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3 or later, Microsoft Windows 2000/XP
WordSend		Open Source	Microsoft Word 2003 (or later) XML documents (WordML)

Language Software

Application	Level of Unicode Support	Cost	Operating System	Software Dependencies
Adapt It Unicode — provides tools for translating either text or scripture from one language which you know, to another related language known to you or a coworker.	Uses Uniscribe	freeware	Windows 2000/XP/Vista, RTL scripts require Windows XP, Linux, Mac OS X (early 2009)
Phonology Template Editor and Search Tool — assists with the phonological analysis of a Bantu language	UTF-16		Windows XP or later	Microsoft .NET Framework Version 1.1
Bibledit — a multi-platform USFM Bible editor or Scripture processor		freeware  GNU General Public License	Macintosh, Linux, Windows
CarlaStudio 2.9.0.1 — CarlaStudio is a program that you use both to model languages and then to put the model to work parsing texts and adapting texts to another language. CarlaStudio employs several other programs to actually do the work on language texts. There are three tasks that you can perform with this version of CarlaStudio: Language Modeling, Text Processing, and Parse Problem Fixing.	Uses Uniscribe	freeware	Windows 2000/XP, RTL scripts require Windows XP or greater
SIL FieldWorks — A suite of software tools to help language teams manage language and cultural data, with support for complex scripts.	Full support for rendering complex scripts via Uniscribe and Graphite (except vertical scripts) / Includes Text Services Framework support for keyboarding that provides extra support for Input Method Editors and Keyman / Full support for converting data to Unicode	SIL Open Source License	Windows 2000/XP Professional/Vista (ver. 4.2)
LexiquePro — an interactive lexicon viewer, with hyperlinks between entries, category views, dictionary reversal, search, and export tools.	Unicode enabled / Unicode conversion from legacy fonts via TECkit / Right-to-Left languages (e.g. Arabic) supported.	freeware	Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/Vista (ver. 2.7)
Paratext 6+ — a Bible translation software program.	UTF-8, Uniscribe, See also Character Encoding Choices in Paratext 6		Windows 98SE or later (Vista requires version 6.1)
Toolbox (The Field Linguist’s Toolbox) — a data management and analysis tool for field linguists.	UTF-8, Uniscribe	freeware	Windows (Vista requires version 1.5.1)
Vocabulary Manager Unicode — a Windows-based, multimedia vocabulary learning tool; like an electronic flash card system with audio. VM allows you to create a database of vocabulary items with an image and two audio recordings (one for a 'citation' form and one for the 'in context' form) for each item. As you build the database, you can practice the words, and test yourself in terms of comprehension, production, and spelling. When you want to share the database and audio and picture files, the program will package it up for easy sharing. The new users can then easily modify the database to meet their own language learning needs.	Uses Uniscribe	freeware	Windows 2000/XP/Vista, RTL scripts require Windows XP

Applications which allow Windows apps to run on Linux

Application	Cost	Operating System	Other information
Crossover Office	$39.95	Linux	Microsoft Office, Photoshop, and Lotus Notes
Win4Lin Pro	$119.99	Linux	Provides support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP applications and operating systems.
Wine	free ( GNU Lesser General Public License)	x86-based Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris	Loads Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP, Windows 3.x and DOS programs and libraries.

Help us keep this page up-to-date

Page History

2007-11-14 LP: Updated Text Editor list

2007-10-08 LP: Added some Vista information

2007-05-18 LP: Updated Crossover price, SILConverters, Toolbox, MSKLC and Keyman information

2006-06-30 LP: updated OO/Graphite info and added Uniscribe URL

2006-01-30 LP: updated Adapt It URL

1	This information is from  http://www.tavultesoft.com/keyman/support/FAQ002.php

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