L2/26-007
Source: Editorial Working Group
Date: January 14, 2026
In preparation for the release of Unicode 18.0.0 on September 15, 2026, the Editorial Working Group reviewed and revised the following sections of the core specification:
We already have a draft for the Chisoi block descriptions and we are currently working on Jurchen and Seal. Work has progressed on specific additional characters including Arabic crown characters, phonetic characters, Hebrew and musical symbols.
The term “Middle Eastern” will be replaced by “West Asian” across the core specification, to better match the geographic designation.
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.
Based on the schedule produced by the Release Management Group, the Editorial Working Group has established for itself the following targets:
| Date | Description |
|---|---|
| February 10 | Start of the alpha review |
| April 15 | Changes to the web framework frozen |
| April 21—23 (UTC) | Repertoire frozen |
| May 15 | Placeholders inserted for any significant missing content |
| May 26 | Start of the beta review |
| June 15 | New sections for review |
| July 15 | Other content for review |
| July 21—23 (UTC) | Response to beta review |
| August 15 | Showstoppers only (either content or framework code) after this point |
| September 15 | 18.0.0 Release |
The Editorial Working Group is exploring restructuring the block descriptions of scripts (chapters 7-20), to eliminate the arbitrary division into chapters (for example, South and Central Asia-I to -IV). This exploration will consider an alternative approach towards organizing groups of scripts. This may impact the future division of the core spec into chapters. Target: post-18.0.
The Editorial Working Group continues its periodic review and general maintenance of Unicode web pages, both out of its own initiative and public feedback.
FYI: Public-facing information about the Editorial Working Group and its work is maintained on the Unicode Editorial Working Group Page on the website. The Editorial Working Group also maintains an internal subsite for use by the committee. People who would like to find out more about the work of the Editorial Working Group or contribute to that work should contact the Chair, Louka Ménard Blondin ([email protected]).
The Editorial Working Group continues to meet regularly. Our meetings are generally held on a biweekly schedule, except when holidays or other events coincide, such as UTC meetings. This report to the UTC includes feedback from the Editorial Working Group meetings held on November 6, 2025, November 20, 2025, December 4, 2025, December 18, 2025, and January 8, 2026.
UTC Editorial Working Group intends to apply the PDF/A profile (a standard in the PDF community) to the PDF version of the Unicode 18.0 Core Specification. PDF/A is PDF, but a restricted profile of PDF usage, for "archival robustness". The Core Specification is a historically significant document which deserves to be readable for decades. PDF/A is an appropriate way to advance this goal.
The biggest change will be that the PDF of the Core Spec will be password-free. This is consistent with the HTML version of the Core Spec and ISO/IEC standards documents, which are also password-free. We are investigating producing tamper-evident PDF/A content, using standard mechanisms like digital signatures.
FYI: During this cycle, the Editorial Working Group has been lightly reviewing UAXes and UTSes.
Date/Time: Tues Jan 06 14:22:16 PT 2026
ReportID:
ID20260106142216
Name: Battista Benciolini
Report Type: Report Error in Publication/Data
Opt Subject: confusion between ASCII standard and other
standard
I've read several sections of the Unicode 17.0 standard, which I downloaded as a PDF file.
On many pages, I find the familiar information that ASCII is a 7-bit code,
with code points ranging from 0x00 to 0x7F.
This is why I wonder whether table 5.1 on page 271 is entirely correct and consistent.
Does the control character "NEL" (i.e. next line) really exist in the ASCII code?
How can the number 0x85 be represented with 7 bits ??
I suspect the error is in the header of the fourth column of the cited table.
Perhaps it should be something like "ISO/IEC 8859-1 (Latin 1)".
best regards
Battista Benciolini
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