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.

New version of Unicode Ideographic Variation Database released

The Unicode Consortium is pleased to announce the release of the 2017-12-12 version of the Unicode Ideographic Variation Database (IVD), which is the sixth version, and includes five registered collections. This version registers the new KRName collection and the first 36 sequences in that collection, four additional sequences in the registered Adobe-Japan1 collection, and 674 additional sequences in the registered Moji_Joho collection. Details can be found on the main IVD page.

Feedback on Draft additional repertoire for ISO/IEC 10646:2017 (5th edition) DAM1 and PDAM2.2

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.

The following additional repertoires from ISO/IEC 10646:2017 (5th Edition), which are in ballot, and are under review. See the associated repertoires in: Draft additional repertoire for ISO/IEC 10646:2017 (5th edition) DAM1 [PRI #366] and PDAM 2.2 [PRI #365].

The Unicode Standard is developed in synchrony with ISO/IEC 10646. Note that for DAM1, no further changes or corrections will be possible after ISO balloting is completed. Comments the PDAM 2.2 repertoire can be made on later ballots. (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 L2/17-372 (DAM1) and L2/17-366 (PDAM 2.2) are available in the UTC Document Registry.

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

Support Unicode with an Adopt-a-Character Gift this Holiday Season!

This holiday season you can give a unique gift by adopting any emoji, letter, or symbol — and help support the Unicode Consortium’s mission to enable all languages to be used on computers. Three levels of sponsorship are available​, starting at $100. With over 130,000 characters to choose from, you are certain to find an appropriate character, for even the most demanding recipient. All sponsors will receive a custom digital badge featuring the adopted character for use on the web and elsewhere. Sponsors at the two highest levels will receive a special thank-you gift engraved with the name you supply and the adopted character.

The program funds work on “digitally disadvantaged” languages, both modern and historic. In 2017 the program awarded grants to support work on Mayan hieroglyphs and historic Indic scripts, among others.

To date, the Adopt-a-Character program has had over 500 sponsors. Be part of the next wave, with a worthwhile gift!

For more information on the program, or to adopt a character, see the Adopt-a-Character Page.

Unicode Emoji 11.0 Beta

Emoji 11.0 beta is now available for developers, with 130 Draft Candidates, such as:

The list is not final: changes can include removals or additions: for example, new ZWJ sequences could be added. The decisions of the 2017Q4 UTC meeting for emoji have been incorporated into the draft Charts, Specification, and Data, and are now available for testing and feedback. The contents will be finalized in 2018Q1. The following are the expected dates for 2018.

Emoji Set	Decision date	Announcement of final list	Market availability
Draft Emoji Candidates (2018)	2018-01	2018-03	2018H2

The version number for the next release of Unicode emoji is jumping from the previously-released Emoji 5.0 to Emoji 11.0 (instead of 6.0). This is due to alignment of the emoji versions in 2018 and beyond with the versions of the Unicode Standard.

The draft emoji 11.0β Charts now show the candidates in context: for example, Emoji Ordering, v11.0β shows the sorting of all the emoji, with the candidates highlighted with rounded-rectangles. Feedback on the sort-order, categories, names, and keywords is welcome.

The draft 11.0β Specification has a number of changes, including proposed guidelines for display, handling gender, handling skin tone, and a proposed mechanism for allowing emoji to point either to the right or left.

The draft 11.0β Emoji Data provides property data, which determines how implementations handle the new characters.

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