Transforms are used to process Unicode text in many different ways. Some include case mapping, normalization, transliteration and bidirectional text handling.
Case mapping is used to handle mappings of upper- and lower-case characters from one language to another language, and writing systems that use letters of the same alphabet to handle titlecase mappings that are particular to some class. They provide for certain language-specific mappings as well.
Normalization is used to convert text to a unique, equivalent form. Systems can normalize Unicode-encoded text to one particular sequence, such as a normalizing composite character sequences into precomposed characters. While Normalization Forms are specified for Unicode text, they can also be extended to non-Unicode (legacy) character encodings. This is based on mapping the legacy character set strings to and from Unicode.
Transforms provide a general-purpose package for processing Unicode text. They are a powerful and flexible mechanism for handling a variety of different tasks, including:
The Bidirectional Algorithm was developed to specify the direction of text in a text flow.