BETA Unicode® 15.1.0
| Note: The beta review period for Unicode 15.1.0 has closed,
as of
July 4, 2023. Feedback received during the public review can be
referred to from PRI #480.
This beta review page is
left active, however, for convenience of access to the prepublication versions
of the Unicode 15.1.0 data files and annexes, until the formal release
planned for September 12, 2023. |
The next version of the Unicode Standard will be Version 15.1.0, planned for release on
September 12, 2023. This version updates several annexes to deal with
segmentation issues and adds significant new repertoire.
A total of 608 new characters are encoded.
A beta version of the 15.1.0 Unicode Character Database files is available for public review.
We strongly encourage implementers to review the summary description,
download the beta 15.1.0 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 15.1.0 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, four other Unicode Technical
Standards have significant text and data file updates that are
correlated with the new additions for Unicode 15.1.0. 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 15.1.0
or the Unicode Character Database data files should refer to the beta review
Public Review Issue #480.
Comments on specific Version 15.1.0 UAXes and UTSes should refer to the respective
Public Review Issue Numbers
for each document, where available.
The comment period ends
July 4, 2023.
All substantive technical comments must have been received by that date for
consideration at the July 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superseded by other files at any time.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 15.1.0 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 15.1.0 data
files, expected on September 12, 2023.
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 15.1.0.
The assignment of characters for Unicode 15.1.0 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 15.1.0, 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 15.0.0
characters, as well as the property values for the new Unicode 15.1.0 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.
The beta review period is a good opportunity to add support for the new
Unicode 15.1.0 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 15.1.0 of Unicode.
Notable Issues for Beta Reviewers
Changes to Unicode Standard Annexes
Some of the Unicode Standard Annexes have modifications for
Unicode 15.1.0, often in coordination with changes to character properties.
Most notably for Unicode 15.1.0:
- There has been a major update to UAX #14, Unicode Line Breaking Algorithm, to
provide better default line breaking behavior for orthographic syllables
in a significant number of scripts of Southeast Asia.
See the Modifications section of each Annex for details of the relevant changes.
Core Specification Update
Note that there is no update of the core specification planned for this minor
release.
General Character Property Issues
There are a number of issues related to particular character properties:
- There are 5 new ideographic description characters. These extend the
syntax of ideographic description sequences.
- Two of the new ideographic description characters function
as unary operators, which necessitated introduction of a new binary property: IDS_Unary_Operator.
- There are two new properties, ID_Compat_Math_Start and
ID_Compat_Math_Continue, for the new
Mathematical Compatibility Notation Profile in UAX
#31.
- There is a new property NFKC_Simple_Casefold which establishes
another normalization form like NFKC_Casefold does. The new one
uses Simple_Case_Folding mappings rather than full Case_Folding
mappings. This is intended for use in systems that support
case-insensitive identifiers based on simple (1:1) case folding
mappings.
- Five new values have been added to the Line_Break property, in support
of new orthographic line breaking rules for a significant number of Southeast Asian
scripts, as well as Brahmi.
Numeric Property Issues
There are several numeric issues among CJK ideographs to check in implementations.
- There is one large new value in extracted/DerivedNumericValues.txt: 10000000000000000 (for U+4EAC)
- U+5146 has two kPrimaryNumeric values: 1000000, 1000000000000
- U+79ED has two kPrimaryNumeric values: 1000000000, 1000000000000
Unihan-related Issues
All Unihan
properties should be reviewed carefully. Note that the Unihan Database
is currently frozen for 15.1.0. Beta feedback on Unihan properties will
be dealt with in a future release. The following changes
deserve special attention:
- A new CJK unified ideograph block, Extension I, has been added, with
603 characters in the range U+2EBF0..U+2EE4A. Implementaters should check
carefully for any hard-coded assumptions about CJK ranges. Note that
to keep the CJK block ranges as compact as possible, Extension I has
been added to Plane 2, instead of directly after Extension H on Plane 3.
Implementers should check that their code does not assume that CJK extensions
all occur in alphabetic order by the extension letter.
- Some kRSUnicode values now include double-apostrophe radicals, sometimes as the only values for a code point.
- Seven old provisional properties have been removed.
- Six new provisional properties have been added.
See UAX #38 for further details on these changes, especially Section 4.2, Listing
by Date of Addition to the Unicode Standard, and Section 4.3, Listing by
Location within Unihan.zip.
UAX #38 also has updated regex values for numerous
Unihan properties. For the double-apostrophe radicals, see:
Other CJK-related changes
- CJKRadicals.txt: Several radical numbers now end with two apostrophe characters. Example: 213''; 2EF2; 4E80
- From the UAX 38 kRSUnicode docs: “Two apostrophes (") after the radical indicates a non-Chinese simplified version of the given radical.”
- Two such radicals are used in kRSUnicode but do not (currently) have data in CJKRadicals.txt. There are no characters in the radicals blocks for them. And one is the first to have a unified ideograph that is outside the original Unicode 1.1 Unihan block (in fact, it has a supplementary code point).
- 182'' / U+322C4
- 208'' / U+9F21
Code Charts
As always, careful review of the updated code charts for Version 15.1.0 is advised.
Particular issues to take note of include:
- The code charts for the main CJK Unified Ideographs block (U+4E00) has
an updated format that uses 7 columns for source glyphs, instead of 6. The
KP source glyphs have been explicitly added to the code charts.
- The font used for the representative glyphs of the Alchemical Symbols
block has been updated.
Collation-related Issues
The Default Unicode Collation Element Table (DUCET) was updated to the Unicode 15.1.0
repertoire for UCA 15.1.0. For the most part, the additions for new
characters are unremarkable, but implementations should be checked to ensure
the new additions do not cause problems.
There has been an additional update to DUCET regarding the weighting of quotation
marks. Various single quotation marks are now weighted as secondary variants
of U+0027 APOSTROPHE, and various double quotation marks are now weighted
as secondary variants of U+0022 QUOTATION MARK. U+05F3 HEBREW PUNCTUATION GERESH
is also weighted as a secondary variant of U+0027, and U+05F4 HEBREW PUNCTUATION
GERSHAYIM is weighted as a secondary variant of U+0022. This change enables
better behavior of geresh and gershayim for searching and sorting, and brings
UCA more in line with the CLDR tailorings for quotation marks, geresh, and
gershayim.
Other Issues
Please also check the following specific items carefully:
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]](https://www.unicode.org/webscripts/logo60s2.gif){kind=small}
