Unicode Technical Committee

The Unicode Technical Committee (UTC), is responsible for the development and maintenance of the Unicode Standard, including the Unicode Character Database, as well as Unicode Technical Reports and Unicode Technical Standards. As appropriate, the UTC releases Updates and Errata to its publications or takes public positions.

Meetings

The UTC meets on a quarterly basis (see calendar for dates and locations). The agenda for each meeting is posted two weeks in advance in the Members Only section of this site and announced on the members only mailing list.

Meetings are open to the public, space permitting. All UTC decisions are made in accordance with the TC Procedures, subject to additional limitations set forth in applicable Unicode Policies. Full and Institutional members of the Unicode Consortium have one vote. Supporting members have half a vote. Associate, liaison, and individual members (along with invited observers) also participate in the UTC meetings but do not vote.

To add a topic to the UTC meeting agenda, members should send their request via email to the UnicoRe list with "UTC Agenda" in the subject line and also follow the instructions for submitting documents. Non-members should contact the Unicode office for information. Proposals for new characters or scripts are subject to additional requirements on content and format.

Following each meeting, the UTC produces a set of meeting minutes, action items and motions voted upon. Meeting minutes are publicly available online. Information about UTC meetings and the UTC document registers are publicly available. Access to other member resources are for members only. To become a member, see Join the Consortium.

Email discussions

Outside of the formal meetings, much of the technical work of the UTC is conducted in email discussions held on the distribution list of Unicode members (Unicore). Informal discussions of technical issues are also held on public Unicode email distribution lists.

Officers

The current Technical Committee Officers are:

• Chair: Lisa Moore (IBM)
• Vice-Chair: Craig Cummings (Unicode)

Liaison

The UTC is a Class C Liaison Body of the International Standards Organization (ISO). It makes recommendations to ISO’s Working Group 2 – Multiple Octet Codes – of the Joint Technical Committee 1/Sub-Committee 2 (JTC1/SC2), which is also known as Information Technology/Coded Character Sets Committee.

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