from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
Basic Multilingual Plane
BMP
<text, standard> (BMP) The first plane defined in
{Unicode}/{ISO 10646}, designed to include all {scripts} in
active modern use. The BMP currently includes the Latin,
Greek, Cyrillic, Devangari, hiragana, katakana, and Cherokee
scripts, among others, and a large body of mathematical,
{APL}-related, and other miscellaneous {characters}. Most of
the {Han} {ideographs} in current use are present in the BMP,
but due to the large number of ideographs, many were placed in
the {Supplementary Ideographic Plane}.
Unicode home (http://unicode.org).
(2002-03-19)