As has been stated in Introduction to Unicode, several Unicode algorithms require the usage of a large database of information which, as of the preview 3 of this library, is 600 KB on x86. Note the database does not contain everything one might need at this stage of the development of the library.

Features that can avoid dependency on that database do so; so it is not required for UTF conversions for example, that are purely header-only.

UCD generation

The Unicode Character Database can be generated using a parser present in the source distribution of this library to analyze the data provided by Unicode.org.

Note however that the parser itself needs to be updated to be made aware of new proprieties; otherwise those properties will fallback to the default value and the parser will issue a warning.

Binary compatibility

This library does not provide any kind of binary compatibility of the UCD so that applications compiled with version X of the library may actually link to version Y of the libray, with Y >= X, partially due to performance considerations.

This may change in the future once proper benchmarking has been done.

Alternate databases

Future versions of this library may provide alternate implementations of this database as a thin layer over a database provided by another library or environment to prevent duplication of data.