L2/08-109

IVD Update and incorporation in Unicode and in ISO/IEC 10646
Eric Muller
February 7, 2008

1. On December 14, 2007, the registration of a collection and
sequences by Adobe Systems came to a conclusion. This resulted in a
new version of the IVD, labelled 2007-12-14. While not required by the
registration process, we also have a code chart showing all the
variations.

2. As currently worded, Unicode 5.1.0 does not sanction those
variation sequences for standard use. Specifically, section 16.4,
page 545:

 Only the variation sequences specifically defined in the file
 StandardizedVariants.txt in the Unicode Character Database are
 sanctioned for standard use. In all the other cases, the variation
 selector cannot change the visual appearance of the preceding base
 character from what if would have had in the absence of the variation
 selector.

We propose to amend that to:

 Only the variation sequences specifically defined in the file
 StandardizedVariants.txt in the Unicode Character Database and
 in version 2007-12-14 of the Ideographic Variation Database are
 sanctioned for standard use. In all ...

We would also suggest a mention of the IVD in Chapter 12, East Asian Scripts.

3. Similarly, ISO/IEC 10646 does not accomodate the IVD sequences. We
propose to send the following text to WG2, as a Unicode and/or L2
contribution, or a ballot comments:

  The end of the third paragraph of Clause 20.5 and the following
  note currently read:

     Variations sequences composed of a unified ideograph as the base
     character and one of VARIATION SELECTOR-17 to VARIATION
     SELECTOR-256 from the Supplementary Special-purpose Plane (SSP) are
     registered in the Ideographic Variation Database defined by Unicode
     Technical Standard #37.

        NOTE 2 - The Ideographic Variation Database is currently
        empty. When entries are registered, these variation sequences will be
        referenced by this standard.

  Following the procedure defined by Unicode Technical Standard #37,
  a new version of the Ideographic Variation Database has been accepted
  on December 12, 2007. This version is identified as '2007-12-14', and
  contains 14,651 sequences, covering the repertoire of the Adobe Japan1
  repertoire. We suggest to replace NOTE 2 by the following paragraph or
  similar text at the earliest possible opportunity:

     This version of the standard incorporates by reference the
     variation sequences listed in version 2007-12-14 of the
     Ideographic Variation Database, as described at
     <http://www.unicode.org/ivd/data/2007-12-14>.

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