First created at:						3/12/2007
Last updated at:						3/13/2007

UTF-8 text preparation functions
--------------------------------

OVERVIEW

This project proposes to add six new kernel functions for the support of
UTF-8 text preparations as described in [1]. The interfaces proposed will
do case foldings and normalizations on UTF-8 text as specified in
the Unicode standard [2, 3].

The interfaces are requested by SNAS Technologies group and file system
groups such as NFS and PCFS to support necessary standards and also to be
compatible with file systems from other vendors.

Unicode case foldings and normalizations together will require less than
80KB of data to contain necessary case mappings and equivalency mappings for
a version of Unicode. The project proposes to support Unicode versions 3.2 and
5.0 as they are the only two notable versions of Unicode that we need to
support for our products.

Unicode normally comes out with a major version every two years or so.
The latest Unicode 5.0 came out at November of 2006.


INTERFACE STABILITY AND RELEASE BINDING

There is no notable imported interfaces. The following are the exported
interfaces:

	Interface		Stability		Reference

	u8_textprep_open(),	Committed		[1]
	u8_textprep_buf(),
	u8_textprep_close(),
	u8_textprep_str(),
	u8_strcmp(),
	u8_validate()
                                                                               |
	U8_* macros		Committed		[1]                    |

The project team asks for Micro/Patch release binding.


REFERENCES

[1] Man pages at the case directory in flat text files:
    materials/*.9f
[2] The Unicode standard:
    http://www.unicode.org/standard/standard.html
[3] Unicode Standard Annex #15: UNICODE NORMALIZATION FORMS
    http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr15/