CJK Type Blog

Continuing where my Standards 101 article left off, class is once again in session as Standards 102, and today’s topic is “silent corrections.”

The ultimate focus of this particular article is on the first three pages of WG2 N4008 (2011), Resolution M58.03 of WG2 N4104 (2011), and the Unicode mappings for two ideographs in GB 12052-89 (1989; 信息交换用朝鲜文字编码字符集), a standard from China that is a regional Korean character set. The two ideographs in question are at positions 72-33 and 72-67 in that standard. All of this started when I submitted L2/10-362 (2010), which proposed better source references for 94 ideographs that were appended to the special version of the GB/T 12345-90 (1990; 信息交换用汉字编码字符集―辅助集) standard that was used to compile the URO (Unified Repertoire & Ordering) in Unicode Version 1.1, but which are not actually present in that standard proper. It turns out that these ideographs originated in the GB 12052-89 standard.

But first, let’s briefly discuss the issue of “silent corrections” in standards, particularly in GB standards…
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The sixth version of the Unicode IVD (Ideographic Variation Database) was released today, and is named based on today’s date: 2017-12-12.

This new version of the IVD incorporates three PRIs, #349, #351, and #354, which resulted in the registration of a fifth IVD collection, KRName, and its 36 IVSes, along with additional IVSes for the registered Adobe-Japan1 and Moji_Joho IVD collections. Be sure to read Unicode’s official announcement, and consider following @IVD_Registrar on Twitter.

As the image below confirms, the road to ideographic hell is indeed paved with turtles and dragons.

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Another three years have elapsed since I posted an update to the always-enjoyable Unicode Beyond-BMP Top Ten List, so I figured that an updated version—taking into account standardization developments that have occurred since then—was in order for the current year of 2017.

Enjoy!

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U+2F9B2 䕫 is a CJK Compatibility Ideograph, and like all CJK Compatibility Ideographs, it canonically decomposes to a CJK Unified Ideograph, and also has a Standardized Variation Sequence (SVS) that uses its canonical equivalent as its base character. This character also has a single source reference, H-8FA8, which corresponds to HKSCS (Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set) 0x8FA8.

So, what’s the problem? Put simply, its canonical equivalent, U+456B 䕫, is neither in HKSCS nor in its Big Five subset:

If this character is ever normalized—regardless of the normalization form—it is converted to its canonical equivalent, U+456B 䕫, which is not likely to be included in fonts that are designed for use in Hong Kong SAR. Furthermore, even if its SVS, <U+456B,U+FE00>, is used, there is a similar problem in that its base character is also not likely to be present in fonts that are designed for use in Hong Kong SAR.
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