What's new in Unicode 7.0?

http://babelstone.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/whats-new-in-unicode-70.html

by conductor • 13 years ago

74 37 13 years ago

babelstone.blogspot.co.uk

acqq• 13 years ago

I see one character that will be hugely successful now that it's standardized: 1f595

Aldo_MX2• 13 years ago

🖕

DISCLAIMER: This is not a personal attack but a demonstration of the character.

gcb0• 13 years ago

Nice square.

colanderman2• 13 years ago

The best part is that since it's not in any fonts yet, if you use it in a document it's essentially a time bomb (or a time-f-bomb if you will).

etfb• 13 years ago

Still no Klingon? Quvatlh!

Eduard• 13 years ago

At least they introduced the Vulcan salute at U+1F596!

3JPLW• 13 years ago

Here's an interesting response[1] from Michael Everson back in 1997. Also interesting is that there's already a reserved area in the CSUR (ConScript Unicode Registry) for it[2], and you may even have a font that shows it[3]! I was surprised I had one: !

[1]. http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/Archives-Old/UML...

[2]. http://www.evertype.com/standards/csur/klingon.html

[3]. http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Test_Klingon.html

pjscott• 13 years ago

Also sadly missing the Tengwar of Fëanor, though they're in the Unicode roadmap.

http://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/smp/

There are not enough elves in the Unicode committee.

pilsetnieks• 13 years ago

Isn't Linear A a little bit of an overkill? I mean, if we at least knew what it meant, maybe then, but now?

breadbox• 13 years ago

Presumably it's useful to people who are writing papers in the process of deciphering it. Assuming anyone other than crackpots are still trying.

igravious5• 13 years ago

And "MAN IN BUSINESS SUIT LEVITATING" is not overkill?

Seems to devalue the entire standard and project.

edit: Unicode should be universally useful. This is not. I would love to be convinced otherwise however .....

duskwuff• 13 years ago

Even if this specific character isn't of any particular use, the fact that you can now represent every character in Webdings in Unicode is kind of nice, I guess.

jrochkind1• 13 years ago

You want each character, on it's own, to be universally useful? That's a pretty high standard, there wouldn't be very many characters to meet it and include in the repertoire.

Pretty much every character that exists is useful to some people some time, but not every person all the time.

cmccabe• 13 years ago

In the future, Man in Business Suit Levitating will be the only form of communication.

derleth3• 13 years ago

Unicode should be easy to standardize. It's never going to be, but making arbitrary decisions on what's 'useful' or not just makes the process harder by making everyone's blood pressure go up every single time that kind of decision has to be made.

Frankly, one of the biggest advantages of having so many codepoints is being able to burn some of them on less-useful shit simply so the standards folk can move on.

colanderman2• 13 years ago

To be fair, I think it's supposed to be a stylized exclamation mark.

Aldo_MX2• 13 years ago

From today I will use "MAN IN BUSINESS SUIT LEVITATING" as the representation of sending a patch upstream.

🕴

jacalata• 13 years ago

Doesn't it open up some new automated translation opportunities? Even just by making them easier, if not actually making them possible for the first time.

ars• 13 years ago

How would it do that? Just use a custom (private) code block, and distribute a font people can install that will enable it. It's not necessary to make it global.

Daniel_Newby• 13 years ago

There is a lot of Linear A text known, and some of it has been decoded. It also shares symbols and even a few words with Linear B. Many books and papers have been written about it. That makes it a reasonable candidate for Unicode inclusion. If nothing else Unicodization will let scholars use standard editors.

kristopolous• 13 years ago

Linear A at least has many artifacts.

In Unicode 5.1, a script with a single artifact had the character set from its short inscription included:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaistos_Disc#Unicode

Perhaps your font supports it:

𐇑𐇛𐇜𐇐𐇡𐇽 | 𐇧𐇷𐇛 | 𐇬𐇼𐇖𐇽 | 𐇬𐇬𐇱 | 𐇑𐇛𐇓𐇷𐇰 | 𐇪𐇼𐇖𐇛 | 𐇪𐇻𐇗 | 𐇑𐇛𐇕𐇡[.] | 𐇮𐇩𐇲 | 𐇑𐇛𐇸𐇢𐇲 | 𐇐𐇸𐇷𐇖 | 𐇑𐇛𐇯𐇦𐇵𐇽 | 𐇶𐇚 | 𐇑𐇪𐇨𐇙𐇦𐇡 | 𐇫𐇐𐇽 | 𐇑𐇛𐇮𐇩𐇽 | 𐇑𐇛𐇪𐇪𐇲𐇴𐇤 | 𐇰𐇦 | 𐇑𐇛𐇮𐇩𐇽 | 𐇑𐇪𐇨𐇙𐇦𐇡 | 𐇫𐇐𐇽 | 𐇑𐇛𐇮𐇩𐇽 | 𐇑𐇛𐇪𐇝𐇯𐇡𐇪 | 𐇕𐇡𐇠𐇢 | 𐇮𐇩𐇛 | 𐇑𐇛𐇜𐇐 | 𐇦𐇢𐇲𐇽 | 𐇙𐇒𐇵 | 𐇑𐇛𐇪𐇪𐇲𐇴𐇤 | 𐇜𐇐 | 𐇙𐇒𐇵 |

jayfuerstenberg• 13 years ago

Surprising that it took this long to introduce the middle finger as a standard character.

Emails will never be the same again.

frozenport• 13 years ago

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........../'/.../..../......./¨¯\

........('(...´...´.... ¯~/'...')

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..........''...\.......... _.·´

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xrt2• 13 years ago

They lost me when they went to 21 bits.

xrt2• 13 years ago

So a middle finger gets fewer downvotes than a technical commentary. awesome.

derleth3• 13 years ago

That wasn't a technical commentary.

nikbackm• 13 years ago

You mean they should have stayed at 16 bits?

What would happen to all the characters that don't fit in that case, better luck in other standards?

brownbat2• 13 years ago

The current dispute between Marshallese and Latvian is a phenomenal example of the sort of puzzles here.

Apparently the Marshallese require some characters to display with cedillas, and Latvian has characters traditionally named "(some letter) WITH CEDILLA" even though they are displayed with commas... so if you just say "LETTER WITH CEDILLA" it's now not clear whether you mean cedilla or comma, and correcting it would break Latvian.

http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2013/13128-latvian-marshal-adhoc....

Not sure how they do this work without going slowly insane.

userulluipeste• 13 years ago

The same scenario - S and T with cedillas, used in Turkish and (used to be) used in Romanian. Only that Romanian letters should be with comma, not cedillas (on small scale the difference is not distinguishable). So it's Romanian vs Turkish? No, it isn't! S and T with commas were added for Romanian later (somewhere waaay separate from other Romanian diacritics) in the Unicode set and everybody is happy! ...and sane.

brownbat2• 13 years ago

Latvian and Marshallese is slightly more confusing, because Latvian commas are already called cedillas in the unicode names, despite not actually being cedillas.

Sure, they'll just extend by adding something like "MARSHALLESE CEDILLA" to refer to actual cedillas. But it still must be frustrating to discover areas where traditional orthographic names are ambiguous or even misleading.

What's new in Unicode 7.0?

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