Ideographic Research Group
(ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2/IRG)
Convenor: Ken LUNDE (小林劍󠄁)
•
Chief Editor: CHEN Zhuang (陈壮)
•
IWDS Editor: Yi BAI (白易)
•
ORT Manager: Henry CHAN (陳輝恒)
The Ideographic Research Group (IRG) is a subgroup of Working Group 2 (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2) of Subcommittee 2 (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2) of Joint Technical Committee 1 (ISO/IEC JTC 1) under ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission). The IRG is primarily tasked by WG 2 to develop and review Han ideograph (aka Chinese character) repertoires that consist of submissions from member bodies and liaison organizations. These repertoires are referred to as IRG working sets, which eventually become encoded and harmonized across both the ISO/IEC 10646 (Universal Coded Character Set) standard and the Unicode Standard as new CJK Unified Ideographs extension blocks. The IRG also accepts and reviews other documents that affect Han ideographs, such as Urgently Needed Character (UNC) proposals, horizontal extension proposals, disunification proposals, and representative glyph change proposals.
Upcoming Meetings
The IRG meets twice a year. The Spring meeting is virtual (Zoom), and the Fall meeting is hybrid, which requires a host. If there is no host, the meeting shall be virtual. The following are the upcoming meetings in chronological order:
| Meeting |
Location |
Dates |
First Call |
Logistics |
| 63 |
Seoul, ROK — Hybrid |
2024-10-21/25 |
IRG N2692 |
IRG N2672R |
| 64 |
Virtual (Zoom) |
2025-03-17/21 |
|
N/A |
| 65 |
Guangzhou, China — Hybrid |
2025-10-13/17 |
|
|
| 66 |
Virtual (Zoom) |
2026-03-16/20 |
|
N/A |
| 67 |
(seeking host) |
TBD |
|
|
The Past IRG Meetings Summary page provides a summary of past IRG meetings.
IRG Working Sets
The following table lists in reverse chronological order the recent IRG working sets with links to their Online Review Tools (ORTs) and their corresponding CJK Unified Ideographs extension blocks (if standardized):
Accessing Older IRG Documents
It will take considerable time and effort to migrate older IRG documents to the new IRG document register. The migration, which will be done incrementally, is expected to be done in reverse chronological order. To access older IRG documents, use the previous IRG home page, which will no longer be updated. If, for any reason, the previous IRG home page goes down or is otherwise unavailable, the Internet Archive Wayback Machine is an alternate way to access older IRG documents.
History
The CJK Joint Research Group (CJK-JRG), which was established in 1990, was charged with developing the original CJK Unified Ideographs block. The Ideographic Rapporteur Group (IRG) was formed on 1993-05-28 per Resolution 3 (WG2 Ideographic Rapporteur Group) on page one of document SC 2 N2466 (Resolutions of 4th JTC 1/SC 2 Plenary Meeting held in Athens on May 27–28, 1993). The title of IRG Rapporteur was changed to IRG Convenor in 2018. The IRG acquired its current name, Ideographic Research Group, on 2019-06-21 per Recommendation M68.17 (IRG Name Change) on page four of document WG 2 N5054 (Recommendations from WG 2 meeting 68), which was instigated by document IRG N2381 (Jenkins & Lunde) and Recommendation IRG M52.12 (Renaming of IRG) on page four of document IRG N2360. The table below lists the history of the IRG Rapporteurs and IRG Convenors in reverse chronological order:
| Years |
IRG Convenor |
IRG Rapporteur |
| 2024–present |
Ken LUNDE (小林劍󠄁) |
|
| 2018–2024 |
LU Qin (陸勤) |
|
| 2004–2018 |
|
LU Qin (陸勤) |
| 1995–2004 |
|
ZHANG Zhoucai (张轴材) |
| 1994 & 1995 |
|
KIDO Akio (木戸彰夫) |
| 1993 & 1994 |
|
KATO Shigenobu (加藤重信) |
![[Unicode]](https://www.unicode.org/webscripts/logo60s2.gif){kind=small}
