BETA Unicode® 9.0.0
| Note: The beta review period for Unicode 9.0.0 has closed, as
of May 13, 2016. Feedback received during the public review can be
referred to from PRI #323.
This beta review page is
left active, however, for convenience of access to the prepublication versions
of the Unicode 9.0.0 data files and annexes, until the formal release
planned for mid-June, 2016. |
The next version of the Unicode Standard will be Version 9.0.0, planned for release in
June, 2016. This version updates several annexes
to deal with segmentation issues for sequences of characters displayed as emoji,
and adds significant new repertoire.
A total of 7,500 new characters are encoded, including
numerous popular emoji symbols,
6 new scripts, and multiple additions to existing blocks.
A beta version of the 9.0.0 Unicode Character Database files is available for public review.
We strongly encourage implementers to review the summary description,
download the beta 9.0.0 Unicode Character Database files,
and test their programs with the new data, well before the end of the beta period. It is especially important
to review the Notable Issues for Beta Reviewers.
We encourage users to check the code charts carefully
to verify correctness of the new characters added to Unicode 9.0.0 and to ensure that there are no regressions
in glyph shapes for previously encoded characters.
Related Unicode Technical Standards
In addition to the Unicode Standard proper, three other Unicode Technical
Standards have significant text and data file updates that are
correlated with the new additions for Unicode 9.0.0. Review of that text
and data is also encouraged during the beta review period.
Review and Feedback
For guidance on how to focus your review, see the section
Notable Issues for Beta Reviewers.
Any feedback should be
reported using the contact form.
Comments on the Unicode Standard Version 9.0.0
or the Unicode Character Database data files should refer to the beta review
Public Review Issue #323.
Comments on specific Version 9.0.0 UAXes and UTSes should refer to the respective
Public Review Issue Numbers
for each document, where available.
The comment period ends
May 2, 2016.
All substantive technical comments must have been received by that date for
consideration at the May UTC meeting. Editorial comments (typos,
etc.) may be still submitted after that date for consideration in the final
editorial work.
Note: All beta files may be updated, replaced, or
superseded by other files at any time. The beta files will be
discarded once Unicode 9.0.0 is final. It is inappropriate to cite
these files as other than a work in progress. No
products or implementations should be released based on the beta
UCD data files—use only the final, approved Version 9.0.0 data
files, expected in June 2016.
The Unicode Consortium provides early access to updated versions of the data files
and text to give reviewers and developers as much time as possible to ensure a problem-free adoption of
Version 9.0.0.
The assignment of characters for Unicode 9.0.0 is
now stable. There will be no further
additions or modifications of code points and no further changes to character names.
Please do not submit feedback requesting changes to code points
or character names for Unicode 9.0.0, as such feedback is not actionable.
One of the main purposes of the beta review period is to verify and
correct the preliminary character property assignments in the Unicode Character
Database. Reviewers should check for property changes to existing Unicode 8.0.0
characters, as well as the property values for the new Unicode 9.0.0 character
additions. The Auxiliary
HTML charts include the new characters highlighted in yellow, with names appearing when hovering over a cell. These charts
may be useful for reviewing information such as the default collation order,
Script property assignments, and so forth during beta review.
To facilitate verification of the property changes and additions,
diffable XML versions
of the Unicode Character Database are available. These XML
files are dated, so that people can check the details of changes that occurred
during the beta review period. For more information,
see the
diffs.readme.txt
file.
The beta review period is a good opportunity to add support for the new
Unicode 9.0.0 characters in internal versions of software, so that software can
be tested to verify that the new characters and property assignments do not cause
problems when upgraded to Version 9.0.0 of Unicode.
Notable Issues for Beta Reviewers
Changes to Unicode Standard Annexes
Some of the Unicode Standard Annexes have modifications for
Unicode 9.0.0, often in coordination with changes to character properties.
Most notably for Unicode 9.0.0:
Core Specification Update
The core specification is undergoing extensive review, with
numerous additions for Version 9.0.0. Although the draft text for Version 9.0.0
is not yet available, specific reports of any technical or editorial
issues in the currently published core specification
are also welcome during the beta review
period. Such reports will be taken into consideration for corrections
to the Version 9.0.0 draft. (Note: The Unicode Consortium has ongoing
opportunities for subject-matter volunteers: experts interested in contributing to or
editing relevant parts of the core specification or other Unicode specifications.)
Script-specific Issues
Six new scripts have been added in Unicode 9.0. All of these additions are
on Plane 1. Some of these scripts have
particular attributes which may cause issues for implementations. The more
important of these attributes are summarized here.
Two of the newly encoded scripts, Osage and Adlam, are bicameral. This means
that support will require addition of case mapping and case folding
tables for them.
Adlam is also a right-to-left script with cursive joining, so it requires
bidirectional support and has rendering issues similar to those of the Arabic script.
Tangut is a very large siniform ideographic script. It is the first
siniform ideographic script encoded after the Han (CJK) script. Its implementation requires
technology support similar to that used for CJK, including very large fonts and
radical/stroke input methods. Special adjustments have also been made to the Unicode
Collation Algorithm to account for the introduction of another large ideographic
repertoire.
Casing-related Issues
A set of nine historic Cyrillic letter forms (U+1C80..U+1C88) used in Old Church Slavonic
were added. These letters are lowercase and have asymmetric case mappings
to existing uppercase letters, similar to the asymmetric case mapping of
Greek final sigma to capital sigma. Case folding for these nine Cyrillic
letters needs to be implemented with care.
An uppercase Latin letter was added, U+A7AE LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SMALL CAPITAL I,
forming a case pair with
an existing lowercase letter, U+026A LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL I, for which a different uppercase
counterpart had been recommended, but not formally mapped, prior to Unicode 9.0.
Numeric-related Issues
Some of the newly encoded Malayalam fractions have numeric values which are new
in Unicode 9.0. Implementations that process numeric values should be prepared
to handle new fractional values, such as 1/20 or 1/40.
The newly added script Bhaiksuki has both script-specific decimal digits and non-decimal unit numerals.
Unihan-related Issues
The syntax of the kRS* fields, such as kRSUnicode and kRSKangXi, has
been extended to allow for negative values of residual stroke counts.
A negative value indicates that strokes which would normally constitute
the indexing radical are intentionally missing. The kRSUnicode and
kRSKangXi fields of a few CJK ideographs have been updated accordingly.
Implementers should be prepared to handle negative values for residual
stroke counts. In sorting, negative values should be replaced with zero
to prevent characters with such values from sorting before the characters
that represent the radical itself.
Many kMandarin readings have been updated. Implementations which
depend on the kMandarin readings, such as phonetic sortings of Chinese
data, need to be checked against these changes.
Standardized Variation Sequences
The constraints on standardized variation sequences have been relaxed slightly,
to allow a spacing combining mark (General_Category=Spacing_Mark) as the
initial character of a variation sequence. Nonspacing combining marks and
canonical decomposable characters continue to be disallowed in variation
sequences. Implementations should be checked for any assumptions made
regarding the allowed General_Category property values for the initial characters
in variation sequences.
A full set of dotted forms of Myanmar letters for Khamti, Aiton, and Phake
were added as standardized variation sequences, to distinguish them from the
Burmese and Shan styles. One of these new standardized variation sequences
has a spacing combining mark as the initial character of the
sequence: <U+1031, U+FE00>.
A set of 278 variation sequences were added to complete the set of text and emoji
presentations for all pictographic symbols identified as having a default text presentation.
See UTR #51, Unicode Emoji.
Code Charts
There has been significant change to the code charts for Mongolian since the
publication of Unicode 8.0. In addition to corrections for omitted glyphs, the
charts have been updated to display more as they did in Unicode 7.0, with
a summary of all Mongolian standardized variation sequences displayed at the
end of the Mongolian block. The names list section now also shows contextual
variant glyphs. These appear for each character that also has one or more
standardized variation sequences associated with it.
Other Issues
Please also check the following specific items carefully:
- There have been significant additions to the Script_Extensions property.
Implementations that process script data or use script extensions should be checked carefully.
- Tangut was added to UnicodeData.txt with a start line and end line, similar to the way
that data file handles CJK unified ideographs. Parsers of UnicodeData.txt may need to be
updated to handle this new range.
- Copyright and registered signs are now used in the data files.
The file encoding did not change, and still is UTF-8, but now there are
non-ASCII characters actually present in many files that formerly contained
only ASCII characters.
- Two existing Mongolian characters, U+1885 and U+1886, were reclassified, in terms
of General_Category and Bidi_Class, from letters to nonspacing combining marks.
In order to keep identifier derivations stable, these two Mongolian combining
marks have also been made Other_ID_Start=Y. Implementations of identifiers,
in particular, should be checked to verify that they correctly accommodate
these changes.
- U+E007F CANCEL TAG has been un-deprecated for potential use in the proposed
syntax for emoji customization.
- The East_Asian_Width property values of 799 existing characters that
have an emoji presentation were changed to Wide.
The following blocks are new in Unicode 9.0.0. Check implementations
carefully for any range or property value assumptions regarding
these new blocks. See also the single-block delta charts.
| Range |
Block Name |
| 1C80..1C8F |
Cyrillic Extended-C |
| 104B0..104FF |
Osage |
| 11400..1147F |
Newa |
| 11660..1167F |
Mongolian Supplement |
| 11C00..11C6F |
Bhaiksuki |
| 11C70..11CBF |
Marchen |
| 16FE0..16FFF |
Ideographic Symbols and Punctuation |
| 17000..187FF |
Tangut |
| 18800..18AFF |
Tangut Components |
| 1E000..1E02F |
Glagolitic Supplement |
| 1E900..1E95F |
Adlam |
Some blocks have also had font updates to use better font
designs, often picking up commercial font designs
to better reflect current design practice for a script.
Notable among these are font updates for the Cherokee,
Kannada, and Malayalam blocks, as well as an improved
design for the lari currency sign.
In such cases, careful review of the blocks in question
is advised, to ensure that there have not been any
regressions in representative glyph display.
General Issues
For current proposed updates to the particular UAXes, see
Proposed Updates for Standard Annexes
or use the links in the navigation bar on this page.
Particular issues in the UAXes may also be the focus of specific
Public Review Issues.
Each proposed textual change in a UAX is highlighted, so that you can focus
your review on those sections if you have limited time. The changes
are also listed in detail in the Modifications sections (linked from the table
of contents of each document), and are summarized in
UAX changes,
so you can check on those areas that might be of most
interest.
Some links between beta documents and the proposed
updates for UAXes will not work correctly during the
beta review period. This is a known problem which does
not need to be reported, as such links point to
the eventual final names or revision numbers for the
released versions.
Stability
Certain character properties for newly assigned characters cannot be
changed after the formal release of each version of the standard, because of the
Character Encoding Stability Policy.
Such character property values need special attention during the beta review process, as they
cannot be corrected after publication. These include:
- Any property affecting Unicode Normalization, including Decomposition_Mapping, Canonical_Combining_Class, and Composition_Exclusion.
- The determination of whether a character is included in identifiers (XID_Start, XID_Continue).
- Case mappings and case foldings.
![[Unicode]](http://www.unicode.org/webscripts/logo60s2.gif){kind=small}
The Unicode Standard