A fast and easily customised operating system
for ARM devices
Unicode support
RISC OS 5 has a Unicode Font Manager. Currently, though, few applications make use of it, partly due to the fact that the Wimp only partially supports it, and also because there’s no agreed way for third-party software to ensure that user-facing text is always readable in both UTF-8 and old-style system alphabets.
The following to-do list is an attempt to clarify what needs to be done in order to make UTF-8 system alphabets work properly, and also to create an environment in which third-party application authors can update their programs in a backwards-compatible way.
| Task | Progress |
| 1. Chars capable of viewing/inserting UTF-8 characters | In progress |
| 2. Edit capable of viewing/editing UTF-8 text | |
| 3. Agree an update to the Territories system (see forum discussion) | |
| 4. Update Wimp and Filer to work correctly in UTF-8 | |
| 5. Update remaining apps for UTF-8 (Draw, Alarm, etc.) | |
| 6. Update Configure plug-in for Alphabet | |
| 7. Publish technical notes for third-party developers | |
| 8. Add more characters to ROM fonts |