7 ms·
Unicode 13.0
- russellallen 7y ago> Unicode 13.0 adds 5,930 characters, for a total of 143,859 characters. These additions include 4 new scripts, for a total of 154 scripts, as well as 55 new emoji characters. So how far off is Unicode from being 'done'? At what point will they be able to stop adding characters and scripts?
- tambre 7y agoOnce people stop needing and/or inventing new characters and scripts.
- magicalhippo 7y agoAnd emojis, don't forget about the all-important emojis.
- samastur 7y agoYou are probably joking, but I am seriously annoyed there's no donkey emoji.
- rbonvall 7y agoMy wife and I call each other "donkey", and some years ago we used the horse emoji, which was low resolution enough to look as a donkey if you squinted. But modern emojis are too high resolution and it definitely looks like a horse now. So I feel your pain.
- JdeBP 7y agoIs U+130D8 not good enough for you?
- mrspuratic 7y agoIf there's room in Unicode to describe "ARABIC LETTER BEH WITH THREE DOTS POINTING UPWARDS BELOW AND TWO DOTS ABOVE" there's room for "DONKEY". I wonder why Gardiner's descriptions never made it into Unicode? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Egyptian_hieroglyphs#E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Egyptian_hieroglyphs#E O, wait, there are censored genitalia in D block ...
- samastur 7y agoThanks, I wasn't aware of it. Sadly I get square when I try to use it so less reliable than emoji.
- mrspuratic 7y agoI wanted a pink pony. My wifi SSID is <horse U+1F40E><unicorn U+1F984>, which is a barely satisfactory approximation. (FWIW the FTP site is still up: ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/13.0.0/ )
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y agoEmoji: It's like Kanji, only without agreed upon semantic meaning or pronunciation. I pity historians of the future who have to try and decipher this garbage.
- tialaramex 7y agoHa, imagine if some idiots designed a whole country so that its correct functioning depended upon trying to decipher the meaning of symbols which lack semantic meaning decades or even centuries later. Oh wait, that's the United States of America. What does constitute a "well regulated militia" and how exactly did those symbols come to mean people you wouldn't trust with a sharp stick are allowed semi-automatic hand guns? Symbols mean whatever people want them to mean, that's the extent to which Humpty is right when he lectures Alice. Whether it's an Eggplant emoji or "Ugandan discussions" the symbol is not the meaning of the symbol.
- rbanffy 7y ago"214 graphic characters that provide compatibility with various home computers from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s and with early teletext broadcasting standards" This part is dear to me, as I helped craft it. It includes 2x3 videotext mosaic characters that will make it much easier to draw large text have have better quality charts in text terminal interfaces. And, of course, the ability to properly encode documents that were generated in computers in the 70's and 80's that contained those platform-specific characters. For 14 we are planning on adding symbols from the Sharp MZ series and the large text characters (3x3 cells) of HP terminals.
- bhaak 7y agoThe niche audience of terminal based games will also be thankful forever to you and the rest of the people that got those characters into Unicode.
- rbanffy 7y agoGo get them. https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1FB00.pdf https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1FB00.pdf
- phaker 7y agoDown for me as is everything else. Found a unicode consortium tweet (!) with a picture of the whole block: https://twitter.com/unicode/status/1085613123183071232?lang=en https://twitter.com/unicode/status/1085613123183071232?lang=...
- JdeBP 7y agoThey might be interested in Unscii, too. It has been updated in light of Unicode 13. * http://pelulamu.net/unscii/ http://pelulamu.net/unscii/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18478350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18478350)
- pmarreck 7y agoDo these... do these include the old Commodore 64 metacharacters/symbols??
- pilif 7y agoeither that or when there are 2^24 used codepoints.
- klodolph 7y agoThe available space is closer to 2^20 (0-10FFFF, minus surrogate pairs, depending on whether you are talking about Unicode scalar values or code points).
- Someone 7y agoThere’s also Emoji modifiers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscellaneous_Symbols_and_Pictographs#Emoji_modifiers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscellaneous_Symbols_and_Pict...) and regional indicators https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Indicator_Symbol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Indicator_Symbol that complicate determining the number of Unicode characters.
- taejo 7y agoGerman, a European language that has been more or less standardized for several centuries, with a Latin-based alphabet, added a new letter (ẞ) to its alphabet in 2017. As long as that continues to happen, Unicode will have to add new characters, even if no more ancient scripts are discovered and no new writing systems are developed for currently unwritten languages.
- tasogare 7y agoSmall precision for those who don't know the context: the Eszett (which comes from the ligature of 'ss') existed for centuries already in German writing. 2017 is just the date of its official integration in the alphabet, so it's not a 'new' letter created from scratch. I say that because I remember learning it at school a few decades ago (even if at the time we were warned the subject was touchy), and I was surprised it wasn't standardized that earlier.
- oprypin 7y agoThis is about capital ẞ. Small ß must've been in Unicode from the start.
- Sukram21 7y agoThe Eszett (ß) has been already standardized for several decades (since 1986: with ISO 8859-1 aka latin-1). The newly added letter is the "capital letter Eszett", which did not exist until recently. One could argue that this new letter is not really needed, as Eszett does not appear in capitalized form except when a word is in all-caps, and was then simply written as "SS".
- chrisseaton 7y ago> So how far off is Unicode from being 'done'? Do you think human written language is ‘done’ and will never evolve?
- ken 7y agoI think that most of the changes in Unicode 13 are not from the evolution of human written language. I don't know anyone who's ever written "blueberries" by drawing a picture of some blueberries in the middle of their text.
- nradov 7y agoEmojis literally are an evolution in human written language. They started with youth texting and are now showing up in business emails. I predict that within 50 years we'll see emojis as a routine component of New York Times articles.
- pmarreck 7y agoI'm not going to hold my breath on this one. Emojis have an air of informality that is not appropriate in many circumstances. Imagine writing a death notice with emojis
- JdeBP 7y agoWell one could use U+1303F. But you wait until Maya script gets into Unicode. You'll have at least three different Maya codepoints for death. (-:
- ken 7y agoNow you're getting into the definition of "writing". I would say I've only seen emoji typed, not written. (Before anyone asks: yes, I've seen cuneiform written. I have some interesting friends.) If you count any visual communication that is typed on a phone under the greater umbrella of "writing", then we could also include colors, styles, orientation, funny fonts, image memes, animation, etc. There's no end to the possible visual communication that people might want to transmit digitally. Where do you draw the line? I draw it at "anything in or using a language that people might write in the absence of computers, which they would then reasonably want to store and transmit using a computer". I don't include "any possible visual communication that can occur using a computer". That's far too broad to define "text", or be part of any existing "language", which are the stated goals of Unicode.
- throw0101a 7y agoUntil there's a kumquat emoji then it will not be done: * https://www.emojis.com/food/fruit/ https://www.emojis.com/food/fruit/ There will always be another Emoji that someone, somewhere wants to add.
- ygra 7y agoWell, it was a can of worms once they took the existing characters which for the most part were culturally very tied to Japan. Now everyone had access to those fun little icons and in turn a lot of people felt concepts from their cultural surrounding underrepresented. And while every Unicode announcement gets derided because they added more emoji, it's still just a small subset of the standard. Back when they added them I wasn't much of a fan, but by now I think it was the right decision. I still don't use them, but I've heard they're quite popular in younger age groups.
- jcranmer 7y agoI believe all scripts that are in extant use today are complete; if not, the missing extant scripts are down to the scripts with very few literate people (thousands or fewer). Many of the additions today, barring emoji, are covering historical usage. This includes things like Medieval scribal annotations, a different set of numbers for the Ottomans, and the Mayan script. It will still be over a decade for the historical work to be complete, since there is often a lot of actual research that needs to be done to understand how an ancient writing system works, which has to come before you can even put together a coherent proposal for a new script.
- NelsonMinar 7y agoI think that's a good framework to think about Unicode being "done". But even extant scripts aren't done; consider the Bopomofo additions here in Unicode 13. And it's not clear what "done" even means for Chinese characters.
- Analemma_ 7y agoThe Script Encoding Initiative [0] is a UC Berkeley project to add Unicode support for uncommon and historical scripts. They have a list of remaining scripts which is encouragingly short [1], and most of the scripts on that list have proposals in progress so in theory they should be adopted soon [0]: https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/sei/index.html https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/sei/index.html [1]: https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/sei/scripts-not-encoded.html https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/sei/scripts-not-encoded.htm...
- hdjrorkdk 7y agoThe next one needs a coronavirus emoji. Maybe a flu one too while we're at it.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- 7777fps 7y agoor not useful enough? Edit: Apparently HN doesn't support unicode? I was trying to say: U+1F637 or U+1F912 not good enough?
- jwilk 7y agoIt supports Unicode, but it purposefully strips emoji.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago🧐 HN does what now, big 🧠?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mjoin 7y agoadding the "lungs" emoji at the right time
- smilespray 7y agoYou just gotta feel for the Unicode staff, setting out to improve communication across all of humanity. Turns out what we're REALLY interested in are funny emojis.
- goto11 7y agoI suspect emojis as characters will soon be replaced with graphics. Consumers are annoyed or confused when emojis look slightly different on different platforms.
- 2T1Qka0rEiPr 7y agoI'm confused. How would this solve the problem? Whilst looking different is clearly an issue (e.g. the gun being depicted a water gun), I'm not sure what your solution would look like? Images hosted somewhere? You'd get consistency, but you'd lose universality. It goes without saying, but you can use Emoji practically _anywhere_ that support text. That's huge.
- jfk13 7y agoAlthough it depends on having the same level of emoji support across all the relevant systems/devices. If you send a message with Unicode 13 emoji to me and I read it on my phone that's stuck on Unicode 10, it's not much use. Whereas if these silly little images were represented by links to a canonical repository somewhere, newly-added images could automatically work even in pre-existing systems. On the other hand, that'd be dependent on connectivity.
- 2T1Qka0rEiPr 7y agoYeh, so the current system seems better, because, although it's versioned, it doesn't need to constantly communicate with some central server. Also, another drawback is fonts need to be updated, but again, I think the benefits outweigh the costs.
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- leadingthenet 7y agoIs the server down for anyone else?
- rcaught 7y agoIt's down - Google Cache https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Iu6MWZBs9CoJ:https://unicode.org/versions/Unicode13.0.0/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Iu6MWZ...
- rcaught 7y agoWhat's new: https://blog.emojipedia.org/whats-new-in-unicode-13-0/ https://blog.emojipedia.org/whats-new-in-unicode-13-0/
- Tepix 7y agoI hope it's not just new emojis... ️
- CannisterFlux 7y agoWell you jest maybe, but the vast majority of new characters are not emojis. The Creative Commons symbol, for example. And 200 glyphs from the vintage Apple II, Amstrad CPC and Commodore Amiga computers. There are "only" 55 new emojis. FWIW I love new emojis and can't wait for WhatsApp/Android to add the new ones :-)
- JdeBP 7y agoMore bopomofo. Several more historic scripts. The new teletext symbols and 8-segment display digits look interesting. I need to check my combining class stuff, it seems.
- tasogare 7y agoPage down. So I read that instead: https://blog.emojipedia.org/whats-new-in-unicode-13-0/ https://blog.emojipedia.org/whats-new-in-unicode-13-0/ I'm personally hyped by the new characters for Creative Common, that could come in handy in data processing (at least in my field). It's cool the Bopomofo was extended to support Cantonese (didn't know this existed tbh), because it means multilingual Madanrin-Hokkien-Cantonese can use a uniform spelling for word and character readings. And finally Khitan small script, while ghetto, was an interesting offspring of the Chinese script that targeted a Mongolian language. PS: I won't comment on the ridiculous emoji shitshow.
- dwheeler 7y agoPossibly the most important addition is this: > Symbols added in this release (which aren't implemented as emojis) include a Creative Commons symbol, as well as other related glyphs for non-commercial licences, or to indicate where attribution is required. So you can now indicate license requirements, such as attribution, share-alike, or non-commercial use only. Those can apply to a vast number of works, so does nice to have easily-accessed standard symbols for it. It also adds symbols for some older machines, which will make discussing them easier. And yes, it has new emojis. But it is worth noting that the total number of emojis is a very small portion of the Unicode characters.
- pwdisswordfish2 7y agoWas it not Unicode policy not to include logos/trademarks as characters? What changed? (This is why there is no Apple logo or character for TAFKATAFKAP, for one thing.)
- slipheen 7y agoThey discussed the trademark issue a bit in their filing- https://creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/CC-Unicode-Character-Proposal_2016-10-17.pdf https://creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/CC-Un... The CC logo and icons as a matter of trademark law are governed by CC’s trademark policy, which specifies conditions of their use “in a manner reasonable to the medium and context.” According to Unicode criteria for encoding symbols, a trademark weakens, but does not disqualify, the case for encoding. As such, we would like to address this point directly, in addition to emphasizing the criteria that strengthens the case for encoding. So as to be sure there exists no misunderstanding, CC is seeking inclusion of the CC logo and icons in the Unicode standard notwithstanding that CC asserts trademark rights in its logo and icons. The aims of Unicode and the CC trademark policy are not antagonistic to one another. It is perfectly consonant with the purposes for Unicode to allow trademarked logos and icons into its standard without jeopardizing trademark rights of the requesting organization. Especially where, as here, there is a clear and public trademark policy by the submitting organization in place that clarifies when and how the logo and icons may be used, and such marks are ubiquitous. Though the CC logo and icons are trademarked, they are a widely-used functional marking tool that indicates permissive use as an alternative to the well-known © symbol, followed by the icons that represent those terms. As such, they were accepted and celebrated by MoMA into its permanent collection,6 alongside universal icons such as the @ symbol and the International Symbol for Recycling—both of which are encoded in the Unicode standard. Encoding the CC logo and icons in UCS would more easily enable creators to mark their works as consistent with CC’s trademark reasonable to the medium and context, in this case within text-based editors.
- app4soft 7y agoAnybody know what had happen with George Douros' «Ancient Sripts» and «Symbola» fonts development?[0] For a long time on its homepage placed message banner: > New versions of all fonts will be posted the release of Unicode 13, March 2020. [0] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ttf-symbola https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ttf-symbola [1] http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/ http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/
- ken 7y ago> Black Cat: a combination of Cat and ⬛ Black Large Square I predict that within 10 years, some group will start a new simplified text encoding standard which is just for text.
- weregiraffe 7y agoAnd I predict that within 10 years after that, they'll add emojis to their new standard.
- figbert 7y agoFor those that cannot access the link: https://home.unicode.org/announcing-the-unicode-standard-version-13-0/ https://home.unicode.org/announcing-the-unicode-standard-ver...
- DannyB2 7y agoStill no coat hangar symbol.
- Chlorus 7y agoFound some additional info on the legacy computing symbols - chapter 22, page 856 - https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode13.0.0/ch22.pdf https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode13.0.0/ch22.pdf "Support for these legacy computing symbols includes 212 characters added in Version 13.0 to provide compatibility with a wide range of early home computers, or “microcomputers,” manufactured from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. These symbols also cover the teletext broadcasting standard originally developed in the early 1970s, and the Minitel standard developed in the 1980s. This collection of early microcomputer symbols includes support for the character sets of Amstrad CPC, Apple 8-bit, Atari 8 and 16- bit, Commodore 8 and 16-bit, MSX, Yamaha, RISC OS, and Tandy"
- jakeogh 7y agoWhat's the code point for uppercase superscript Z?