The Unicode/UTC Subcommittee on Encoding of Symbols is working on a proposal
for the encoding of emoji symbols in the Unicode Standard and in ISO
10646, with active participation by Google, Apple, Microsoft and others.
We
would like to invite organizations and individuals interested in the
encoding of emoji symbols to give us feedback on the current state of
our data, in preparation of the proposal document for the February 2009
UTC meeting which is critical for the timely incorporation of these
symbols into Unicode. Please provide feedback
no later than Wednesday, 2009-jan-14.
The most important data items for the review are
- The set of symbols proposed for new encoding
- The character names of symbols proposed for new encoding
How to Review
We are looking for
- whether symbols proposed for new encoding should be unified with existing or upcoming Unicode characters
- whether symbols unified with existing/upcoming characters should instead be proposed for new encoding
- whether we should change the proposed name for a symbol proposed for new encoding
Please see the
chart with the symbols data, including mappings to cell phone carrier symbols. Briefly about this chart:
- Symbols with a U+xxxx code point in the second column are unified with existing/upcoming characters
- Note:
For upcoming characters, the code points and the character names are
provisional and may change. However, it would be difficult to change
those character names at this point.
- Note: Character names
for symbols unified with existing characters are those of the
characters they are unified with, and cannot be changed.
- Symbols with a glyph number in the second column are proposed for new encoding
- For
these, please review the proposed character names, in the first text
line in the third column. (The third column also includes annotations,
comments and font designer instructions. These are not part of the
proposal but are included to give background information.)
There is also a complete
chart legend available.
For
feedback, please
send an email to the
emoji4unicode group.
Note: As issues are resolved, there may be a few changes in the chart over time. In your feedback, please include the date.
Background
Emoji
symbols are widely used on Japanese cell phone networks and are encoded
there as vendor-specific characters. A preliminary proposal for
encoding those symbols and criteria for unification were discussed at
the August 2007 UTC meeting. Successive refinements have been discussed
in successive UTC and subcommittee meetings. Overall, more than 600
emoji symbols are proposed here for new encoding. More than 100 further
emoji symbols can be unified with existing characters or with ARIB
(Japanese Broadcast) symbols, which have been approved by the Unicode
Consortium and which are under ballot for ISO 10646. So review of the
emoji symbols should carefully consider any unifications (or
disunifications) with existing characters and with the provisional
encodings of the ARIB symbols.
For more information, see the main
Emoji Symbols page on
the symbols subcommittee site.