Unicode Emoji 11.0 characters now final for 2018

Emoji 11.0 data has been released, with 157 new emoji such as:

hot face	woozy face
woman, red haired: light skin tone	man, curly haired: dark skin tone
woman superhero	softball
mosquito	pirate flag
flats	lobster

The new Emoji 11.0 set is fixed and final, and includes the data needed for vendors to begin working on their emoji fonts and code ahead of the release of Unicode 11.0, scheduled for June 2018. The new emoji typically start showing up on mobile phones in August or September.

The man and woman emoji can now have various hair styles (red-haired, curly-haired, white-haired, and bald), and the new superhero and supervillain support genders and skin tones. The new leg and foot also support skin tones.

The new emoji are listed in Emoji Recently Added v11.0, with sample images. These images are just samples: vendors for mobile phones, PCs, and web platforms will typically use images that fit their overall emoji designs. In particular, the Emoji Ordering v11.0 chart shows how the new emoji sort compared to the others, with new emoji marked with rounded-rectangles. The other Emoji Charts for Version 11.0 have been updated to show the emoji.

The version number for this release of Unicode emoji is jumping from the previously-released Emoji 5.0 to Emoji 11.0 (instead of 6.0) — starting with this release, the version number for emoji is synchronized with the corresponding version number of the Unicode Standard.

To be considered for emoji 12.0, new emoji proposals must be submitted before the end of March 2018. This schedule is to align with the 2019 release of the Unicode Standard.

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The 157 new emoji will soon be available for adoption to help the Unicode Consortium’s work on digitally disadvantaged languages.

Shopify Joins as Full Member of the Unicode Consortium

The Unicode Consortium is pleased to announce that Shopify has joined as a full member.

Shopify is a cloud-based, multi-channel commerce platform designed for small and medium-sized businesses. Merchants can use the software to design, set up, and manage their stores across multiple sales channels. The Shopify platform was engineered for reliability and scale, making enterprise-level technology available to businesses of all sizes. Headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, Shopify currently powers over 500,000 businesses in approximately 175 countries.

We look forward to their contributions to Unicode projects and are grateful for their financial support of the consortium’s work. Full members of the consortium have a vote in all technical committees, and in the governance of the consortium. See the complete list of members.

IUC 42 Call for Participation Announced!

The IUC 42 Program Committee invites you to submit your session, tutorial, or panel abstracts for the 42nd Internationalization & Unicode® Conference (IUC 42) in Santa Clara, California, September 10-12, 2018.

Join other industry leaders as they map the future of internationalization, ignite new ideas, and showcase the latest technologies and best practices for creating, managing, and testing global, web, and multilingual software solutions. Let imagination be your only limit!

Please submit a brief abstract by the deadline of Friday, March 9, 2018.

The Program Committee will notify authors by April 13, 2018. Speaker agreements and materials such as photos, bios and final presentation abstracts will be required from selected presenters by Friday, April 27, 2018

Tutorial Presenters receive complimentary conference registration, and two nights lodging, while Session Presenters receive a fifty percent conference discount and two nights lodging.

Please visit the conference website to view examples of content from past conferences.

Unicode LDML Keyboard Enhancements

The Unicode CLDR Technical Committee is planning to enhance the Unicode LDML keyboard specifications. The goal is to be able to represent all the keyboard features necessary to support keyboard layouts from all major providers, allowing the CLDR repository of keyboard layouts to support not only languages in widespread use, but also digitally disadvantaged languages.  As a part of this work, keyboards add support for more complex scripts, add capabilities for virtual keyboards (especially mobile phones), incorporate features needed on specific platforms, and provide better layouts overall. Keyboards would also be able to import files, reducing maintenance by allowing common features to be shared. For complex scripts, the transform elements are made more powerful, and reorder and backspace transforms are added.

The plan is to incorporate the changes specified in the PRI #367 background document into CLDR v33 (ca. March 2018), and to work thereafter to improve the tooling for the new specification, and streamline the process for submitting new keyboards into CLDR.

The committee is soliciting feedback on the proposal so that it can make any necessary improvements. The closing date for providing feedback is February 1, 2018.

Please see the PRI #367 page for complete details.

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