Unicode 18.0.0 Beta

bbirdculture 1 day ago 63 commentsRead Article on unicode.org

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Discussion (63 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

computer23•1 day ago

The internet needs a "tin foil hat" emoji, but two proposals have been rejected :(

Emoji proposals and status: https://unicode.org/emoji/emoji-proposals-status.html

account42•about 24 hours ago

The entire notion that emoticons should be limited to what a committee approves (which is then mangled by corporate PR even further) is ridiculous. Just retvrn to images.

brikym•about 23 hours ago

This. But more work is needed. I tried a bunch of Discord alternatives like Matrix but very few have a fun experience with things custom emoji images that really make a chat server feel like a home.

uxellodunum•about 19 hours ago

There are clients on Matrix that support custom emojii, such as Sable and Commet. Neither are absolutely perfect, but I know people who daily-drive one of the other (or both, which is where I'm at depending on the device).

For the most part, now that Matrix is merging those Matrix 2.0 specs finally, and the 2.0 features are already out in the wild with excellent results, it has a really good base, and as expected we've started to see clients build more into the average-consumer space to pose as alternatives to both niche and mainstream audiences such as Discord, Whatsapp, etc - Which it just wasn't/isn't able to do on Matrix 1.x (legacy).

turblety•1 day ago

Did they give a reason why it was declined? Was it some bureaucratic "form not filled in correct" thing, or are they actually against the concept of it?

lifthrasiir•1 day ago

Vendors-have-no-capacity-to-handle-more-than-handful-number-of-emojis-per-each-release thing.

To elaborate: it should be plain obvious that not every Emoji proposal can be accepted even though all of them are correctly filed, as there would be too many Emojis there then. So there has to be some threshold, and that threshold is mostly stipulated by vendors' willingness to process new Emoji characters for designing fonts and updating softwares in time.

wodenokoto•1 day ago

Generally Unicode is for encoding all existing encodings/writing.

So you generally can’t add something because it would be cool or fun or useful, but only because it is currently in use and cannot be encoded by Unicode.

chordbug•about 24 hours ago

If this were entirely true, we'd never see new emoji added, and yet we do.

zyx321•1 day ago

That list only includes suggestions that were seriously considered and voted on.

Since it's a vote, there is no single official 'reason' for rejection. If I had to guess: it would be confusing to anyone who didn't grow up with American TV shows.

pwdisswordfishq•1 day ago

Eh, it's not like there are hundreds of emojises pretty much exclusively tied to Japanese culture.

brikym•1 day ago

Seems like a conspiracy. Also it's so silly that pistol turned into water pistol.

poulpy123•1 day ago

looking at the changes it makes me wonder:

- is there an usable font the cover all unicode ?

- if not is there really a point to include everything possible in unicode ?

- how many space is remaining for new alphabet and smileys ?

- how do they handle changes in scripts, for example if new proto-cuneiform or seal script symbols are discovered ?

wongarsu•1 day ago

> if not is there really a point to include everything possible in unicode ?

Needing to load three fonts to show a single document that mixes vastly different character sets is still infinitely better than not being able to have those different characters in the same .txt or .md file at all

> how many space is remaining for new alphabet and smileys ?

Unicode can encode about 1100k code points, and about 800k of those are currently unassigned and available for future scripts or characters

tecleandor•1 day ago

> how do they handle changes in scripts, for example if new proto-cuneiform or seal script symbols are discovered

They get added in the next Unicode revision.

In Unicode you have "blocks" [0] that are often bigger than the number of characters in a script, language or function. There are usually also space for new blocks between unrelated blocks.

For example, in the case of cuneiform, it was introduced in Unicode 5.0, and there have been revisions in 7.0 and 8.0 [1]

  0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_block
  1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform_(Unicode_block)#History

lifthrasiir•1 day ago

As an example of having not-exactly-a-character as Unicode "characters", it is rather rare that musical symbols are embedded in running texts (which is a primary litmus test for encoding), but musical symbols are typically rendered with existing font technology so there are needs for standardized "character" codes, as SMuFL [1] does. In fact Unicode 18 will get tons of musical symbols that have been in SMuFL for a long time but not yet in Unicode [2].

[1] https://www.smufl.org/

[2] https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2025/25017-miscellaneous-musical...

pveierland•1 day ago

The Noto fonts have great coverage: https://notofonts.github.io/overview/

infinita740•1 day ago

Pretty cool vizualisation.

There is also GNU unifont [1] "The original intent of Unifont was to offer a simple font format with wide Unicode coverage to render something meaningful for each Unicode code point"

[1] https://unifoundry.com/unifont/index.html

orangepanda•1 day ago

What everyone actually cares about — new emojis!

* Cracking face

* Left/Right thumb sign

* Monarch butterfly

* Pickle

* Lighthouse

* Meteor

* Eraser

* Net with handle

wongarsu•1 day ago

Other great additions:

- Left and Right parenthesis with middle ring [1]

- A wiggly exclamation mark expressing mirth or laughter [1] (edit: and something I completely missed: the inverted version can express sarcasm)

- Cuneiform numerals, including lots of arranged dots that might be useful in other contexts [2]

- New variations of "measured angle" and "sector" [3]

- A transparent cube and a white cube [4]

Also a couple new combining marks

And for anyone who wants to see what the reference images for the new emojis look like:

Lighthouse: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-18.0/U180-1F680.p...

Other new Emojis: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-18.0/U180-1FA70.p...

1: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-18.0/U180-2E00.pd...

2: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-18.0/U180-12550.p...

3: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-18.0/U180-1CEC0.p...

4: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-18.0/U180-1F780.p...

Rp8yXmdmr•1 day ago

I would be more interested if they are ever going to cancel HAN unification. Looking at their "Factors for Exclusion" list it could be summarized by "we made some mistakes in past but are sticking to it" :D

lifthrasiir•1 day ago

Han Unification was effectively "fixed" by Ideographic Variation Sequences, so no.

account42•about 24 hours ago

You mean theoretically. Effectively, nothing is fixed yet.

extraduder_ire•about 9 hours ago

Cancel how? There's documents encoded like that which would break it it were changed now.

Unicode takes backward compatibility like this very seriously.

pentamassiv•about 24 hours ago

Sadly it looks like it will be a dead monarch butterfly

https://www.emilydamstra.com/please-enough-dead-butterflies/

BadBadJellyBean•1 day ago

I need a table emoji because then I could combine it with a horse emoji. This would be "Pferd Tisch" (Horse Table) in German which sounds similar to "Fertig" which translates to "done". Yes I want it only for that dumb joke.

chirsz•1 day ago

Still no seahorse

JohnKemeny•1 day ago

If the seahorse emoji is introduced, we will have to train new foundation models. The costs connected to the introduction of the seahorse emoji will be in the billions.

zarzavat•1 day ago

You're absolutely right—the seahorse emoji was added in Unicode version 19.0.0 after OpenAI purchased the Unicode Consortium and converted it to a for-profit corporation.

simondotau•about 24 hours ago

The seahorse being, of course, among the first commercial Unicode characters that require a subscription to use.

Symbiote•about 24 hours ago

Does anyone know why a monarch butterfly was added, when there is already a butterfly emoji?

creepe388•about 2 hours ago

brikym•1 day ago

Hey ChatGPT show me a seahorse emoji.

creepe388•about 2 hours ago

izissise•1 day ago

No toki pona?

lifthrasiir•1 day ago

For now, follow UCSUR: https://sona.pona.la/wiki/Under-ConScript_Unicode_Registry

pwdisswordfishq•1 day ago

Does it need any additional code points?

florianist•about 21 hours ago

The Toki Pona script (aka sitelen pona) needs some codepoints for its ideograms. While Toki Pona is not in Unicode, tokiponists have mostly agreed to use the U+F19xx range in the Private Use Area-A. Most fonts rendering sitelen pona uses that. But using PUA is problematic (no character properties, a lot of restrictions on the web, and constant clashes with other fonts [such as the "nerdfonts" for example]).

sourcegrift•1 day ago

Personally the whole emoji thing is an unmitigated disaster. I'm okay with smileys and gestures but everything else is pointless

vintermann•about 24 hours ago

I'm okay with smileys, but Unicode wasn't the right standard to deal with it. Unicode maybe wasn't the right standard to deal with anything.

At least nothing is wiggling. Of those Unicode points which are graphical, at least all of them can still be printed on paper and won't require a screen. I wonder how long that invariant lasts.

account42•about 24 hours ago

It's classic scope creep resulting in unmanageable bloat.

trvz•about 23 hours ago

I enjoy putting emojis in folder names on my computer for easier visual identification.

Also, in passwords on websites to keep developers on their toes.

sourcegrift•about 20 hours ago

The password thing is hilarious but the former breaks some of my Unix tools

duskwuff•about 13 hours ago

Personally, I'm all for it. It's been an incredibly effective way of urging developers to support newer Unicode standards.

gschizas•about 6 hours ago

Yet Microsoft still refuses to do flags.

numpad0•about 18 hours ago

Google/Apple needed it to fill the moat for Japanese phone market - for Google it was because Japanese carriers were stripping emoji from outgoing emails, and for Apple it was because iPhone as a real phone and not an Internet-connected pocket PC with voice call had to support the SoftBank emoji set.

And yeah, :slack-style-emoji-notation: is superior. It was just a historical necessity for Google/Apple.

adzm•about 24 hours ago

Personally I think the whole emoji thing is a triumph of Unicode. Being able to convey more subtext through emoji makes communication so much easier especially across language boundaries.

Bolwin•about 6 hours ago

I've never seen emoji used for subtext. Usually they just repeat or emphasize what's in the text