Gold Sponsor Elastic

The Unicode Consortium is pleased to announce that Elastic is now a gold sponsor for:

Elastic's  sponsorship directly funds the work of the Unicode Consortium in enabling modern software and computing systems to support the widest range of human languages. There are approximately 7,000 living human languages. Fewer than 100 of these languages are well-supported on computers, mobile phones, and other devices. AAC donations are used to improve support for digitally disadvantaged languages, and to help preserve the world’s linguistic heritage. 

Elastic builds software to make data usable in real time and at scale for search, logging, security, and analytics use cases. Founded in 2012, Elastic develops the open source Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash), X-Pack (commercial features), and Elastic Cloud (a SaaS offering). When Elastic Founder and CEO Shay Banon found out about the Unicode adoption program, he had a cool idea: why not allow every engineer at Elastic (as well as other teammates within the company) to choose and adopt a character? Check out this blog. — Elastic

The Unicode Consortium thanks Elastic for their support!

All sponsors are listed on Sponsors of Adopted Characters. More than 128,000 other characters are available for adoption — see Adopt a Character.   

Gold Sponsor Avocados from Mexico

The Unicode Consortium is pleased to announce that Avocados from Mexico is now a gold sponsor for:

Avocados from Mexico’s sponsorship directly funds the work of the Unicode Consortium in enabling modern software and computing systems to support the widest range of human languages. There are approximately 7,000 living human languages. Fewer than 100 of these languages are well-supported on computers, mobile phones, and other devices. AAC donations are used to improve support for digitally disadvantaged languages, and to help preserve the world’s linguistic heritage.

Avocados From Mexico are healthy, always in season and a delicious way to elevate go-to dishes into a nutritious meal. They provide naturally good fats, nearly 20 vitamins and minerals,  are cholesterol- and sodium-free, making this fresh fruit a heart-healthy fruit. You can find more information and recipe ideas at AvocadosFromMexico.com. 

—Avocados from Mexico

The Unicode Consortium thanks Avocados from Mexico for their support!

All sponsors are listed on Sponsors of Adopted Characters. More than 128,000 other characters are available for adoption — see Adopt a Character.   

Announcing The Unicode® Standard, Version 10.0

Version 10.0 of the Unicode Standard is now available. For the first time, both the core specification and the data files are available on the same date. Version 10.0 adds 8,518 characters, for a total of 136,690 characters. These additions include four new scripts, for a total of 139 scripts, as well as 56 new emoji characters.

The new scripts and characters in Version 10.0 add support for lesser-used languages and unique written requirements worldwide, including:

• Masaram Gondi, used to write Gondi in Central and Southeast India
• Nüshu,used by women in China to write poetry and other discourses until the late twentieth century
• Soyombo and Zanabazar Square, used in historic Buddhist texts to write Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Mongolian
• Syriac letters used for writing Suriyani Malayalam, also known as Garshuni and as Syriac Malayalam
• Gujarati signs used for the transliteration of the Arabic script into Gujarati by Ismaili Khoja communities
• A set of 285 Hentaigana characters used in Japan (historic variants of Hiragana characters)
• CJK Extension F (7,473 Han characters)

Among important symbol additions are:

• Bitcoin sign
• A set of Typicon marks and symbols
• 56 emoji characters including:

mage	coconut
fairy	broccoli
vampire	sandwich

For the full list of emoji characters, see emoji additions for Unicode 10.0, and Emoji Counts. For a detailed description of support for emoji characters by the Unicode Standard, see UTS #51, Unicode Emoji.

Three other important Unicode specifications have been updated for Version 10.0:

• UTS #10, Unicode Collation Algorithm — sorting Unicode text
• UTS #39, Unicode Security Mechanisms — reducing Unicode spoofing
• UTS #46, Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing — compatible processing of non-ASCII URLs

Unicode 10.0 includes a number of changes. Some of the Unicode Standard Annexes have modifications for Unicode 10.0, often in coordination with changes to character properties. In particular, there are changes to UAX #14, Unicode Line Breaking Algorithm, UAX #29, Unicode Text Segmentation, and UAX #31, Unicode Identifier and Pattern Syntax. In addition, UAX #50, Unicode Vertical Text Layout, has been newly incorporated as a part of the standard.

The Unicode Standard is the foundation for all modern software and communications around the world, including all modern operating systems, browsers, laptops, and smart phones—plus the Internet and Web (URLs, HTML, XML, CSS, JSON, etc.). The Unicode Standard, its associated standards, and data form the foundation for CLDR and ICU releases.

Adopt-a-Character

All the additional 8,518 characters including 239 new emoji are now available for adoption to help the Unicode Consortium’s work on digitally disadvantaged languages.

About the Unicode Consortium

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard and related globalization standards.

The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum of corporations and organizations, many in the computer and information processing industry. Members include: Adobe, Apple, EmojiXpress, Facebook, Google, Government of Bangladesh, Government of India, Huawei, IBM, Microsoft, Monotype Imaging, Netflix, Sultanate of Oman MARA, Oracle, Rajya Marathi Vikas Sanstha, SAP, Symantec, Tamil Virtual University, The University of California (Berkeley), plus well over a hundred Associate, Liaison, and Individual members. For a complete member list go to http://www.unicode.org/consortium/members.html.

Gold Sponsor CSRA

The Unicode Consortium is pleased to announce that CSRA is now a gold sponsor for:

CSRA’s sponsorship directly funds the work of the Unicode Consortium in enabling modern software and computing systems to support the widest range of human languages. There are approximately 7,000 living human languages. Fewer than 100 of these languages are well-supported on computers, mobile phones, and other devices. AAC donations are used to improve support for digitally disadvantaged languages, and to help preserve the world’s linguistic heritage.

CSRA is a leading provider of next-generation technology to its public-sector customers. The company’s sponsorship of the U.S. flag emoji is symbolic of the nexus between its IT services and its customers, as featured in an article by NextGov.

The Unicode Consortium thanks CSRA for their support!

All sponsors are listed on Sponsors of Adopted Characters. More than 128,000 other characters are available for adoption — see Adopt a Character.

Gold Sponsor ☮.com

The Unicode Consortium is pleased to announce that ☮.com is now a gold sponsor for:

☮.com’s sponsorship directly funds the work of the Unicode Consortium in enabling modern software and computing systems to support the widest range of human languages. There are approximately 7,000 living human languages. Fewer than 100 of these languages are well-supported on computers, mobile phones, and other devices. AAC donations are used to improve support for digitally disadvantaged languages, and to help preserve the world’s linguistic heritage.

☮.com proudly supports Unicode's efforts because those efforts promote wider and clearer communication to prevent misunderstandings that can cause conflict, violence, and suffering anywhere around the world.

The Unicode Consortium thanks ☮.com for their support!

All sponsors are listed on Sponsors of Adopted Characters. More than 128,000 other characters are available for adoption — see Adopt a Character.

Feedback on Draft Additional Repertoire for Amendments to ISO/IEC 10646:2017 (5th edition)

The Unicode Technical Committee is soliciting feedback on pending additions to the draft repertoire of characters, to help discover any errors in character names, incorrect glyphs, or other problems. There is a short window of opportunity to review and comment on the repertoire additions noted below.

Additional repertoire for two amendments to ISO/IEC 10646:2017 (5th Edition) is under review. See the associated repertoire in: Feedback on draft additional repertoire for Amendment 1.3 (PDAM) to ISO/IEC 10646:2017 (5th edition) and Feedback on draft additional repertoire for Amendment 2 (PDAM) to ISO/IEC 10646:2017 (5th edition).

Review of the Amendment 1.3 draft repertoire is especially urgent, as that content will be finalized by SC2 in September, and is scheduled for eventual publication in next year's Unicode 11.0. Note that the hentaigana and emoji portions of the amendment have already been accelerated for imminent publication in Unicode 10.0, so further comments on character names for those portions of the repertoire are no longer actionable.

There is more time to provide feedback on the Amendment 2 draft repertoire, but note that the addition of Mtavruli Georgian as part of that repertoire is also rather urgent.

The Unicode Standard is developed in synchrony with ISO/IEC 10646. After ISO balloting is completed on any repertoire additions, no further changes or corrections will be possible. (See the FAQ Standards Developing Organizations for additional information on the stages in ISO standards development.) Advance feedback on these repertoire additions will help inform the UTC discussions about its own contribution to the ISO balloting process.

Documents referenced in the draft repertoire with numbers such as L2/15-088 are available in the UTC Document Registry.

For information about how to discuss this Public Review Issue and how to supply formal feedback, please see the feedback and discussion instructions.