Get best of the week

How to add new characters to Unicode

Everyone knows about the generally accepted Unicode standard. Its (UTF-8) uses the vast majority of web resources. And the Unicode Consortium, run by Mark Davis, one of the key contributors to the original 1987 specification, periodically makes updates.

A few days ago , a bunch of emojis were added to updates such as Chinese nu-shu writing or horizontal square writing of the Mongols . But few people know that sometimes the more familiar to us symbols from everyday life fall into planned updates, and ordinary enthusiasts become the initiators of such changes. A similar case occurred a few years ago when Unicode was replenished with symbols of the operating modes of electrical appliances .


Photos - Debby Hudson - Unsplash

How it all started


In 2013, a British IT specialist, Terence Eden, asked the Hacker News community a question. He could not find a suitable symbol to indicate the "STANDBY" mode, which "is on every device or gadget released later than the mid-1970s." Eden noticed that there was a conditional snowman in Unicode, and STANDBY that interested him was absent.

Oxford University Researcher Joe Loughry answered his question . He attached a link to the Consortium’s rules for adding new characters and noted that even in Unicode it’s worth including the designations of other gadget states (for example, ON / OFF). There were five such positions:

  • POWER ON - vertical line
  • POWER OFF - Circle
  • ON / OFF - the vertical line inside the circle
  • STANDBY - a vertical line crossing a circle
  • SLEEP - “waning” crescent

A bit of “bureaucracy”


A few weeks after the start of the discussion, in January 2014, the application was sent to the Consortium. Correspondence and coordination began. Eden wrote about it like this:

“Did you pick the right characters?” Yes! Is there any clear evidence of their use? Yes! Are there any legal restrictions? No! Do the consortium members agree that the characters are really needed? Yes! Yes! .. Maybe! No!"

It is worth explaining that the Consortium has recommendations and criteria for expanding Unicode , but this is not at all a list of strict requirements. Correspondence to them of innovations is not automatically determined, therefore one can argue one’s position and submit a convincing bid.


Photo - Aleksandar Cvetanovic - Unsplash

In this case, the characters STANDBY and POWER ON / OFF did not cause objections, but the rest had to be discussed. Historically, the on and off signs have come from one and zero, but the vast majority of ordinary people do not attach importance to this semantics, but rather focus on the familiar designations that they see on gadgets.

The authors did not find something similar in the specification, and they had to prove that the available signs were not suitable for POWER ON. And for POWER OFF, the Consortium itself allocated the symbol U + 2B58.

It would seem that for the SLEEP mode one could leave a crescent. Unicode already has two of these symbols and 13 more emojis with different phases of the moon. However, Eden and the company insisted that they all did not fit, because they “looked” in the wrong direction and had a “wrong” tilt.

Image - Joe Loughry - MIT License

As a result, a new layout was developed(the corresponding diagram is shown above) with a detailed description of the proportions, and the Consortium accepted it.

Result


Just a month later, the characters were approved by the ISO 10646 Unicode team. Months of waiting stretched, and only in June 2016, updates were published as part of Unicode 9.0. Now all five characters have received official recognition - both ordinary people and designers, developers and even equipment manufacturers work with them.


Photo - Matthew Brodeur - Unsplash

The most important thing in this story is how it brings us back to the atmosphere of the early or “small town” Internet. It seems that then any team of purposeful geeks could bring their undertakings to a global level. That is exactly what happened with Eden and his colleagues. And for those who would like to repeat such an experiment, there are several basic recommendations:

  • (, ) , . , .
  • . 1984 . .
  • . , . .
  • , . , , , .

For even more guidance, see Lowry ’s Guide and Consortium’s Guide .

We at 1cloud.ru offer a private cloud rental service for virtual infrastructure . From the control panel, you can quickly deploy a fleet of virtual servers.
New customers of our service can test the infrastructure for free. It is enough to apply through the form on the website or write to tech support.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/undefined/

More articles:


All Articles