Archive for January, 2017

Resurrecting L2/14-006

This article is largely a test, but also serves to start the process of resurrecting L2/14-006 (Proposal to add standardized variation sequences for nine characters) for discussion at UTC #151 in early May.

Liang Hai (梁海) brought up this document for discussion at UTC #150 last week, and while I had an opportunity to have it accepted by the UTC, to be included in Unicode Version 10.0 (June, 2017), I decided that it was prudent to instead prepare a revised proposal that is more complete, mainly because L2/14-006 was submitted and discussed prior to the first release of the Adobe-branded Source Han Sans and Google-branded Noto Sans CJK Pan-CJK typeface families. This functionality was implemented in those typeface families via the 'locl' GSUB feature, which requires the text to be language-tagged. In other words, I learned a lot since L2/14-006 was discussed, and prefer to submit a more complete proposal, even if it means waiting for Unicode Version 11.0 (June, 2018).
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Year of the Rooster

It is now January 28, 2017 in China and other Chinese-speaking regions.

I’d like to use this opportunity to welcome the Year of the Rooster, and to wish a Chinese New Year to all of my Chinese friends, colleagues, and blog readers. May this year be safe, prosperous, and enjoyable.
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The Tale of U+27BF & Adobe-Japan1-6 CID+20958

As recorded in The Adobe-Japan-6 Character Collection, it was released on 2004-03-05, and one of the glyphs that was added was CID+20958. According to the Adobe-Japan1-6 ordering file, its glyph name is freedial, and is assigned to the Dingbats FDArray element for the purpose of hinting. Of course, if you look for CID+20958 in Adobe Tech Note #5078, you can find it on the bottom of page 54, immediately to the right of CID+20957 that maps from U+26BD ⚽ SOCCER BALL, though it is blank. This is simply because Adobe does not have the rights to use NTT’s trademarked FreeDial mark. CID+20958 was included in Adobe-Japan1-6 for the benefit of font developers who do have the rights to use this mark, and can thus include the glyph in their fonts.
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UTC #150

UTC #150, the 150th Unicode Technical Committee meeting, takes place later this month, from 2017-01-23 through 2017-01-26, and will be hosted by our friends at Apple in Sunnyvale, California. I will attend as Adobe’s representative. As usual, there will be CJK- and IRG-related items to discuss. One item will be the UTC’s review of IRG Working Set 2015 Version 3.0 (aka CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G), L2/17-006, which I recently finished.

A major focus of UTC #150 will be Unicode Version 10.0, which is scheduled to be released in June of this year. Unicode Version 10.0 will include 21 additional characters appended to the URO (Unified Repertoire & Ordering), along with Extension F (7,473 characters), as shown here.

While we’re on the subject of Unicode, be sure to explore the sidebar on the right side of this blog’s landing page, which includes links to several useful Unicode-related resources.

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