title: PHP 7 Unicode-support and platform-independence
body: <p>It's announced that <a href="http://php.net/archive/2015.php#id2015-06-25-1" rel="noreferrer">PHP 7 supports "consistent 64-bit"</a>. What does this mean?</p>
  
  <p>Does PHP 7 support Unicode similar to what was <a href="http://www.derickrethans.nl/talks/php6-unicode.pdf" rel="noreferrer">planned for PHP 6</a> (<code>unicode.semantics</code> directive, etc.)? If not, when will it support Unicode natively? </p>