UTS #37: Ideographic Variation Database is now available

From: Rick McGowan (rick@unicode.org)
Date: Thu Feb 02 2006 - 16:23:38 CST

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    The Unicode Consortium announces the availability of a registration
    mechanism for ideographic variations. Version 1 of Unicode Technical
    Standard #37, Ideographic Variation Database is now available.

    http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr37/

    This UTS describes the organization of the Ideographic Variation Database,
    and the procedure to add sequences to that database.

    Occasionally the need arises in text processing to restrict or change the
    set of glyphs that are to be used to display a character. In special
    circumstances, this restriction needs to be expressed in plain text rather
    than by font selection or some other rich text mechanism. The Unicode
    Standard accomodates those circumstances with variation selectors.

    In the case of Han ideographs, it is impossible to build a single
    collection of variation sequences that can satisfy all the needs of the
    users. The requirements from scholars, governments and publishers are too
    different to be accomodated by a single collection. Instead they can be met
    by having multiple independent collections. The Ideographic Variation
    database ensures that a given variation sequence is used in at most one
    collection.

            Rick McGowan
            Unicode, Inc.



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