tecnickcom/tc-lib-unicode

PHP library containing Unicode methods

2.1.2 2026-05-01 19:05 UTC

Requires

• php: >=8.1
• ext-mbstring: *
• ext-pcre: *
• tecnickcom/tc-lib-unicode-data: ^2.0

Requires (Dev)

• pdepend/pdepend: ^2.16
• phpcompatibility/php-compatibility: ^10.0.0@dev
• phpmd/phpmd: ^2.15
• phpunit/phpunit: ^13.1 || ^12.5 || ^11.5 || ^10.5
• squizlabs/php_codesniffer: ^4.0

LGPL-3.0-or-later

• Nicola Asuni

• pdf
• utf-8
• font
• unicode
• tc-lib-unicode

README

UTF-8 and Unicode processing utilities, including bidirectional text handling.

If this project is useful to you, please consider supporting development via GitHub Sponsors.

Overview

tc-lib-unicode provides Unicode conversion helpers and bidirectional algorithm support for robust multilingual text processing.

It is built to handle multilingual text paths where normalization, code-point handling, and bidirectional ordering directly affect rendering quality. By isolating Unicode-heavy operations, dependent libraries can keep text processing accurate and easier to audit.

Namespace	\Com\Tecnick\Unicode
Author	Nicola Asuni [e-mail]
License	GNU LGPL v3 - see LICENSE
API docs	https://tcpdf.org/docs/srcdoc/tc-lib-unicode
Packagist	https://packagist.org/packages/tecnickcom/tc-lib-unicode

Features

Unicode Utilities

• UTF-8 character and ordinal conversion helpers
• String/character array transformations
• Integration-ready conversion methods for document engines

Bidirectional Support

• Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm implementation
• Right-to-left and mixed-direction text processing
• Supporting shaping/step logic for complex scripts

Character Substitution

• Context-sensitive codepoint-level substitution via Substitution::replaceChars()
• Thai — repositions leading vowels (Sara E/AE/O/AI, U+0E40–U+0E44, U+0E4D) to follow their base consonant, matching PDF visual-order glyph streams
• Devanagari — moves left-positional matras (U+093F) to precede their base consonant cluster, including conjuncts joined by Virama (U+094D)
• Hangul — composes Hangul Jamo sequences (U+1100–U+11FF, U+A960–U+A97F, U+D7B0–U+D7FF) into precomposed syllables (U+AC00–U+D7A3) per Unicode Standard §3.12

Requirements

• PHP 8.1 or later
• Extensions: mbstring, pcre
• Composer

Installation

composer require tecnickcom/tc-lib-unicode

Quick Start

<?php

require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

$bidi = new \Com\Tecnick\Unicode\Bidi('hello ', null, null, 'R', false);
echo $bidi->getString();

Character substitution

Substitution::replaceChars() takes an array of Unicode codepoints and returns a transformed array with script-specific substitutions applied. It is a pure codepoint-level transform with no font or PDF dependency.

<?php

require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

$sub = new \Com\Tecnick\Unicode\Substitution();

// Thai: leading vowel repositioned after its base consonant
// Logical order:  [U+0E40 SARA E, U+0E01 KO KAI]
// Visual order:   [U+0E01 KO KAI, U+0E40 SARA E]
$result = $sub->replaceChars([0x0E40, 0x0E01]);
// $result === [0x0E01, 0x0E40]

// Devanagari: left matra repositioned before its base consonant cluster
// Logical order:  [U+0915 KA, U+093F VOWEL SIGN I]
// Visual order:   [U+093F VOWEL SIGN I, U+0915 KA]
$result = $sub->replaceChars([0x0915, 0x093F]);
// $result === [0x093F, 0x0915]

// Hangul: Jamo composed into a precomposed syllable
// [U+1100 KIYEOK, U+1161 JUNGSEONG A, U+11A8 JONGSEONG KIYEOK] → [U+AC01 각]
$result = $sub->replaceChars([0x1100, 0x1161, 0x11A8]);
// $result === [0xAC01]

Supported scripts and Unicode ranges

Script	Unicode range(s)	Transformation
Thai	U+0E00–U+0E7F	Leading vowels repositioned after base consonant
Devanagari	U+0900–U+097F	Left matras repositioned before consonant cluster
Hangul Jamo	U+1100–U+11FF, U+A960–U+A97F, U+D7B0–U+D7FF	Jamo composed to precomposed syllables (U+AC00–U+D7A3)

Codepoints belonging to unsupported scripts are passed through unchanged.

Development

make deps
make help
make qa

Packaging

make rpm
make deb

For system packages, bootstrap with:

require_once '/usr/share/php/Com/Tecnick/Unicode/autoload.php';

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please review CONTRIBUTING.md, CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md, and SECURITY.md.

Contact

Nicola Asuni - [e-mail]