Archive for January, 2016

An Early Look At Unicode Version 10.0

Posted on January 29, 2016 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

It is with great sadness that I write that Unicode Version 9.0, whose beta was authorized yesterday, on the last day of UTC #146, will include no additional CJK Unified Ideographs. The next opportunity for additional CJK Unified Ideographs is therefore Unicode Version 10.0, which is slated for a June 2017 release, and is expected to include 21 Urgently Needed Characters (UNCs) that are appended to the URO (Unified Repertoire & Ordering), along with Extension F (see IRG N2156 for the latest version) that currently includes 7,473 characters.

Interestingly, and as long as Extension F’s block remains stable, there are only 3,088 code points remaining in Plane 2 (SIP), specifically U+2EBF0 through U+2F7FF, along with 1,502 code points at the end of Plane 2, immediately following CJK Compatibility Ideographs Supplement, specifically U+2FA20 through U+2FFFD.

The image above is an excerpt of a PDF that shows what Unicode Version 10.0 is likely to include in terms of ideographs. If you click on the image, you will get the actual PDF. Of course, the yellow stuff is tentative and subject to change.

Updated on 2016-06-26 to reflect the additional UNC appended to the URO at U+9FEA, along with a net decrease of 12 characters in Extension F, reducing it to 7,473 characters.

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Ideographic Tally Marks

Posted on January 28, 2016 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

In late 2015, I collaborated with Daisuke MIURA to submit a proposal (L2/15-328) to the UTC (Unicode Technical Committee) to encode the characters for four tally mark systems. The proposal was discussed during UTC #146, and the result was that the five ideographic tally mark characters were accepted. Good news.

The Script Ad Hoc Committee originally recommended in their report for UTC #146 (see page 9 of L2/15-037) that IDEOGRAPHIC TALLY DIGIT TWO not be encoded, because they felt that it could be unified with U+1D36E (COUNTING ROD TENS DIGIT SIX), but concerns over typographic consistency led to it being accepted as a separate character.
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Unicode’s “Adopt a Character” Campaign

Posted on January 18, 2016 by Dr. Ken Lunde | Comments (0)

In December of 2015, Unicode launched their Adopt a Character campaign, whose goal is to raise funding for the purpose of encoding a large number of remaining scripts, along with encoding additional characters for scripts that are already encoded. In other words, to help Unicode do its important work. The Unicode Consortium has 501(c)(3) tax status, meaning that donations are tax-deductible in the US, and if your company supports matching grants, you can leverage that to significantly increase the effective donation.
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