IUC 42: Keynote Speaker Announced

The Advent of Mayan Script Encoding: Mapping the Last Frontiers of Mayan Hieroglyphic Decipherment

Carlos Pallan Gayol
Archaeologist & Epigrapher, Dept. of Old American Studies & Ethnology, University of Bonn

Mayan hieroglyphs rank among the most visually complex writing systems ever created. Deciphering them has entailed a 200+ year scholarly quest, but this task is not yet completed and posits an inviting challenge for applying new tools from the information-age, culminating in the encoding of the Mayan script. Join us Tuesday morning, September 11th, as this keynote highlights the latest milestones attained in this pursuit by the NcodeX Project, where Carlos Pallan collaborates with Dr. Deborah Anderson, Researcher, Dept. of Linguistics, UC Berkeley, the Script Encoding Initiative and members of the Unicode advisory board. Stemming from research funded by Unicode’s Adopt-a-Character Program, it has been possible to produce new database tools and advanced functionalities, capable of mapping and analyzing all the textual contents of the extant Mayan books or Codices by relying on a novel catalog of Mayan signs with assigned code points.

See What’s Happening At IUC 42

For over 27 years the Internationalization & Unicode® Conference (IUC) has been the preeminent event highlighting the latest innovations and best practices of global and multilingual software providers. Join us in Santa Clara to promote your ideas and experiences working with natural languages, multicultural user interfaces, producing and supporting multinational and multilingual products, linguistic algorithms, applying internationalization across mobile and social media platforms, or advancements in relevant standards.

Join expert practitioners and industry leaders as they present detailed recommendations for businesses looking to expand to new international markets and those seeking to improve time to market and cost-efficiency of supporting existing markets. Recent conferences have provided specific advice on designing software for European countries, Latin America, China, India, Japan, Korea, the Middle East, and emerging markets.

---

Adopt-a-Character

Over 130,000 characters are available for adoption, to help the Unicode Consortium’s work on digitally disadvantaged languages.

More Emoji Draft Candidates for 2019

There are now 179 proposed Emoji Draft Candidates (61 characters plus variants) for 2019. These are the short-listed candidates for Emoji 12.0, which is planned for release in 2019Q1 together with Unicode 12.0.

The following changes were made in the recent Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) meeting:

1. Added a candidate emoji for deaf person
2. Changed service animal vest to safety vest, and added a candidate emoji sequence using it: service dog
3. Added candidate emoji sequences for couple holding hands, with 55 combinations of skin tone and gender
4. Changed names and ordering for various characters

The list of draft candidates will be reviewed and finalized in the next UTC meeting, this coming September. Feedback is solicited on short names, keywords, and ordering. See also the Emoji 11.0 charts.

Eight Emoji Provisional Candidates for 2020 were also added (ninja, military helmet, mammoth, feather, dodo, magic wand, carpentry saw, screwdriver). For example:

ninja	magic wand

Between now and March 2019, these and other Provisional Candidates will be collected. The Unicode emoji subcommittee will then assess the whole set, and make recommendations to the UTC for which emoji to advance to Draft Candidate status for 2020.

---

Adopt-a-Character

Over 130,000 characters are available for adoption, to help the Unicode Consortium’s work on digitally disadvantaged languages.