L2/23-161

Editorial Committee Report and Recommendations for UTC #176 Meeting

Source: Editorial Committee

Date: July 20, 2023

A. Unicode Release Topics

A1. Unicode 15.1.0 Report

FYI: The Editorial Committee's participation in Unicode 15.1 is relatively limited, because no publication of the core specification is planned for 15.1.

A2. Unicode 16.0.0 Report

FYI: The Editorial Committee is continuing review of new content planned for the eventual 16.0 publication of the core specification. In particular, contributing editors have nearly completed delivering drafts of sections for new scripts that we anticipate will be published in 16.0. To date, we have rolled in reviewed draft sections for the following new scripts. (Section numbers are as they will appear in the revised new 16.0 text.)

Drafts for the following new scripts are in varying states of development and review:

There is also ongoing work to do routine upkeep of the core specification and to stay current with bug reports and other small tweaks to core specification content mandated by the UTC.

In general, the Editorial Committee can assert that we should not have any trouble completing new content for the core specification to cover the current anticipated repertoire for 16.0. The essential challenge for the Editorial Committee for 16.0 is not the new content related to newly assigned repertoire, but rather the overall change in the planned publication format for the 16.0 core specification. (See below.)

A3. Core Specification Future Development

FYI: The "TUS Future" project continues to be active, meeting approximately twice a month.

The planned architecture continues to be a SvelteKit-based website: contents are authored in Svelte components (a kind of enhanced HTML, similar to JSX), then static web pages are generated at compile time for deployment and archiving. A single archival PDF is planned for 16.0, and will be generated from the web pages.

Recent progress:

B. Website Topics

B1. Website Content Maintenance

FYI: The Editorial Committee continues to provide minor maintenance of pages on the Unicode technical website.

B2. FAQ Updating

FYI: The FAQ update project has reached a stage where most of the major revisions to existing items have been accomplished, and all FAQ items are now automatically glossed.

Work is currently underway to add a new FAQ regarding conformance issues. Discussion is ongoing and coordinated with work to update UTR #33, Unicode Conformance Model. Reports of problems in existing FAQ pages or suggestions for new FAQ items should be directed to Ben Yang and Asmus Freytag.

C. Editorial Committee Process Issues

FYI: The Editorial Committee continues to meet regularly. Our meetings are now generally held on a biweekly schedule.

This report to the UTC includes feedback from the Editorial Committee meetings held on May 11, May 25, June 8, June 25, July 6, and July 20, 2023.

Public-facing infomation about the Editorial Committee and its work is maintained on the Unicode Editorial Committee page on the website. The Editorial Committee also maintains an internal subsite for use by the committee. People who would like to find out more about the work of the Editorial Committee or contribute to that work should contact the Acting Chair, Ken Whistler.

NOTICE: The Editorial Committee is currently recruiting for a new chair. The expected responsibilities of the chair would include:

D. UTR Topics

FYI: During this cycle, the Editorial Committee has been reviewing a significant number of UAXes and UTSes. Feedback has been recorded in the Editorial Committee issue tracker, and has been forwarded on to the various contributing editors for their further action.

E. PRI Topics (and other feedback)

E1. Public Feedback noted in L2/23-159

Date/Time: Thu Jun 01 05:25:23 CDT 2023
ReportID: ID20230601052523
Name: Roozbeh Pournader
Report Type: Error Report
Opt Subject: Core Specification

The Lao chapter in the Core Spec is missing any information on spacing. I believe at 
minimum we need to copy some of the information from the Thai section or refer to 
the Thai section about spacing.

This came to light because of a comment made by Norbert Lindenberg that suggested to 
me U+200B is also used in Lao. But there is no such reference in the Core Spec.

FYI: The Editorial Committee discussed this feedback and agreed that it would be useful to update the Lao section with information comparable to that already provided for Thai.

Suggested Action:

AI, Roozbeh Pournader, EDC. Add explanation about spacing in Lao, parallel to the information provided about Thai, to the core specification for 16.0. See general feedback noted in L2/23-159. [Thu Jun 01 05:25:23 CDT 2023]

E2. Public Feedback noted in PRI #480 (Beta Review)

Date/Time: Sun Jun 11 21:40:09 CDT 2023
ReportID: ID20230611214009
Name: Night Koo
Report Type: Public Review Issue
Opt Subject: 480 (EDC)

In Chinese, there is a punctuation called 破折號, which is used
for "continuation of tone or sound, an abrupt change in thought, or adding
new content to the context". The current usage in Chinese is to use two
U+2014 EM DASH for this, but the two-em long dash should have side bearings
while connected in the middle, which normally two U+2014 EM DASH does not
fulfil both properties; it also allow mid-dash breaking which is not
allowed in Chinese typography. New font makers and typographers are slowly
transitioning to use U+2E3A TWO-EM DASH for this punctuation, including
Source Han ( https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-han-sans,
https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-han-serif) which included a CJK
version of this punctuation that is 2-em wide, has side bearings, and
vertically centered to Han ideographs.

1. It might be helpful to include a description under U+2E3A TWO-EM DASH for
Chinese usage as mentioned under W3C Requirements for Chinese Text Layout
(clreq) at https://www.w3.org/TR/clreq/ . Below is my suggestion for a
concise quote of usage to be put under U+2E3A:

• May be used in Chinese for abrupt change of thought, inserting new
  content, or continuation of tone or sound

2. I recognise the following decomposition isn't accurate, but it might also
be helpful to include its pseudo-decomposition used in Chinese as such:

≈ U+2014 U+2014

It can be done to the similar U+2E3B THREE-EM DASH too:

≈ U+2014 U+2014 U+2014

FYI: The Editorial Committee discussed this feedback. We agreed that it would be helpful to add an annotation explaining the current use of U+2E3A in Chinese. We disagreed about the suggestion to add "pseudo-decompositions" for U+2E3A and U+2E3B, as that would conflict with the conventions for listing of normative decompositions in the names list. Instead, it would be appropriate to add explanations about the use of these long dashes in the core specification. It would also be helpful to provide some more explanation about the meaning and use of dashed boxes for display of dash characters in the code charts.

Suggested Actions:

AI, Ken Whistler, EDC. Add an appropriate annotation to the names list for U+2E3A. For Unicode 15.1. See feedback on PRI #480. [Sun Jun 11 21:40:09 CDT 2023]

AI, Ken Whistler, EDC. Add explanation about the use of U+2E3A and U+2E3B in Chinese, as well as the use of dashed boxes to display various dashes in the code charts, to the core specification for 16.0. See feedback on PRI #480. [Sun Jun 11 21:40:09 CDT 2023]

AI, Rick McGowan, UTC. Respond to Night Koo, pointing to the resolution in L2/23-080 and thanking them for their feedback on PRI #480. [Sun Jun 11 21:40:09 CDT 2023]

G. Miscellaneous Topics

G1. (None noted)