
Announcing Unicode 7.0 - bpierre
http://unicode-inc.blogspot.com/2014/06/announcing-unicode-standard-version-70.html
======
smackfu
This page has links to the proposals to add characters:
[http://babelstone.blogspot.com/2013/10/whats-new-in-
unicode-...](http://babelstone.blogspot.com/2013/10/whats-new-in-
unicode-70.html)

Including this one with comments on the Wingdings addition.
[http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n4239.pdf](http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n4239.pdf)

    
    
      a) Ireland recommends adding the following new characters to this table: 
      1F597 REVERSED HAND WITH MIDDLE FINGER EXTENDED 
      1F598 RAISED HAND WITH PART BETWEEN MIDDLE AND RING FINGERS

~~~
colanderman
Note that these glyphs will appear as boxes until font designers get around to
adding them to their fonts.

You can have fun with this. Say you're disillusioned with your current job and
planning to leave within the year. Insert these into whatever important
document you're working on at the time, e.g. as bullet points or decoration
around titles. Sometime after you leave, they'll reveal their true nature. A
sort of "FU" time-bomb.

------
hf
I value the Unicode effort so much, I consider its inconsistencies a _major_
pain point in my life.

Why, for the love of Zeus, is there no codepoint for

    
    
        GREEK SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER ALPHA
    

Am I missing something? Why should I never want to subscript α? I know a few
physicists who gladly would.

It doesn't end there, see the article
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_subscripts_and_supersc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_subscripts_and_superscripts)
which sports a consolidated overview.

Tell me I'm overlooking something very obvious.

~~~
jschulenklopper
> Why is there no codepoint for GREEK SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER ALPHA?

Could it be that (quoted from that Wikipedia page): The World Wide Web
Consortium and the Unicode Consortium have made recommendations on the choice
between using markup and using superscript and subscript characters: "When
used in mathematical context (MathML) it is recommended to consistently use
style markup for superscripts and subscripts."

Inconsistency remains though, since the Unicode standard defines characters
for full superscript Latin lowercase alphabet _except q_ , a limited uppercase
Latin alphabet, a _few_ subscripted lowercase letters, and _some_ Greek
letters.

------
jrochkind1
Everybody's talking about new glyphs/codepoints, but unicode is actually way
more than a list of codepoints.

Note the announcement also includes:

* Changes to the unicode collation algorithm for locale-dependent sorting (I haven't figured out what htey are yet)

* New character properties and values, used for case-changing and line-breaking behavior (i think line-breaking might be locale-dependent too).

* some other stuff

The unicode algorithms for _doing things_ with text in appropriate ways are
actually way more mind-blowing to me than just the directory of glyphs. When
you start thinking about it and get into the weeds and realize how other
languages work very differently than English with regard to some of this stuff
-- proper "uppercase" or "sort" or "are these two strings semantically the
same" across the global universe of glpyhs -- is _really_ challenging, and
unicode does a pretty amazing job of it.

It's sadly way more confusing to figure out if/when the unicode library of
your choice has been updated to use unicode 7.0 (or even 6.0) text algorithms
and full character database with properties, rather than to figure out if a
given font includes the new glpyh or whatever.

------
NoMoreNicksLeft
Dammit, still no glyph for the Artist Formerly Known As Prince.

Don't they realize how much of 1990s music history is unwritable thanks to
this glaring omission?

~~~
gioele
There is no single glyph for The Artist Formerly Known As Prince, but you can
use combining chars to obtain it.

    
    
        01AC LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T WITH HOOK
        030A COMBINING RING ABOVE
        0335 COMBINING SHORT STROKE OVERLAY
        032C COMBINING CARON BELOW 
    

[http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/Archives-
Old/UML...](http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/Archives-
Old/UML019/0611.html)

------
buster
Do we really need small pictures in fonts?

~~~
gtirloni
I had the exact same question pop up in my mind after seeing the emoji's. I
understand all characters can be considered nothing but pictures, but a
thermometer, really? Is this used in any widespread language to be of
significance to Unicode? Is Unicode trying to also offer some kind of clipart
capability?

I think we've seen our fair share of derailed projects in IT. Unicode is
certainly a very critical project, which makes its focus even more important.

~~~
elfcard
That's amusing, because I looked at the thermometer, and thought, oh that's
good, I can use that. But a chilli pepper, do we really need a character for a
chilli pepper? So to answer your question, unicode is trying to bridge the gap
in communication that offers a language independent set of recognizable glyphs
that can be used to communicate. And one mans chilli pepper is another mans
thermometer.

~~~
yoz-y
I suppose that the chilli pepper is there for restaurant menus which often use
it as an indicator of spiciness.

------
n0body
now in perl blead

[http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2014/06/ms...](http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2014/06/msg216878.html)

~~~
edwintorok
OCaml got updated libraries for Unicode 7 too:
[https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-
list/2014-06/msg00081....](https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-
list/2014-06/msg00081.html)

------
minikomi
If anyone's wondering what the notched semicircle looks like, you can see it
along with quite a few (all?) of the new pictographs on this pdf:
[http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-7.0/U70-1F300.pdf](http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-7.0/U70-1F300.pdf)

------
higherpurpose
It also comes with a "No Piracy" emoji:

[https://twitter.com/xor/status/478797422496215040/photo/1](https://twitter.com/xor/status/478797422496215040/photo/1)

~~~
smackfu
It's straight out of the MS Webdings font, from 1997:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webdings#mediaviewer/File:Webdi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webdings#mediaviewer/File:Webdings-
big.png) (top row, 3rd character)

------
scrollaway
I wonder if they added the dozenal sigils
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal#Duodecimal_digits_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal#Duodecimal_digits_on_computerized_writing_systems))
are available on it. Did anyone find them?

Edit: Nope.
[http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2150.pdf](http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2150.pdf)

------
beobab
"Notched Right Semicircle With Three Dots"?

I'm not sure I want to know what this would be used for.

~~~
publicfig
Here's what I was able to find on it.

[http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2010/10395-typikon.pdf](http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2010/10395-typikon.pdf)

------
moron4hire
Nice, but how freaking long is it going to take to get this to show up in
software anywhere? We can't currently reliably use a large swath of
interesting glyphs in the current version.

------
mykhal
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7902924](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7902924)

~~~
edwintorok
This is the 2nd dupe on the frontpage for today. Should HN do some URL
normalization? The dupe about the SSD had an extra trailing slash, and here it
is the usual problem with blogspot.com vs blogspot.<countrycode>.

------
jstalin
Forgive my ignorance, but how do these actually enter the real world? Do
browsers adopt these new characters?

~~~
mmastrac
Technically the entirety of the unicode range is supported by browsers right
now -- they just don't exist in fonts at all. What Unicode does is say that
"this codepoint" means "this". At that point, fonts start adding glyphs to
mean "this" and authors start adding codepoints that refer to "this".

If you look at FontAwesome, it uses characters in the "unicode private use
area" \-- which are effectively undefined -- but putting those codepoints in
your HTML document while having the appropriate font loaded will show the
appropriate icon glyphs.

~~~
greggman
Actually AFAICT Chrome does not support the entirety of the unicode range
right now. Safari and Firefox do.

🙅🎁４👨

~~~
mmastrac
Chrome does support these codepoints, but it doesn't support the format of
Apple's PNG glyphs for emoji. Amusingly, it does support the android colored
glyphs in Chrome for Android.

------
vonuebelgarten
And still no tengwar :(

