ICU 53.1 or greater?

What would keep Ubuntu from updating to ICU 53.1, since it's the version which includes Lao line break / word break support?

If possible, could Vivid include that?

Background:

Lao line and word break support is needed to properly render Lao text, as Lao typically doesn't uses spaces between words, but rather mostly uses spaces like punctuation, a way to split phrases. An example of this is at http://laosabbathschool.com/development/ssd/site/blog/comprehensive-zwsp-test/

If you visit that page with the latest Google Chrome, an iPhone 8.1, or Android 5.0 device, it'll probably look fine. The the current version of LibreOffice also handles the text very well, and even includes word counts. But with other software, you'll see that the lines are not equally distributed, and sometimes requires horizontal scrolling. This creates problems with various applications, such as text editors, email programs, and anything that renders text on multiple lines.

Copy and paste the example text to various applications, and you will see how they handle it. If those applications relied on the system's version of ICU, an update to ICU 53.1 should take care of that problem. If they embed their own, then it may or may not work, depending on what version they include. But at least the update should help several programs support Lao text.