Announcing the Unicode® Standard, Version 13.0

[chart image]Version 13.0 of the Unicode Standard is now available,
including the core specification, annexes, and data files. This version
adds 5,390 characters, for a total of 143,859 characters. These
additions include four new scripts, for a total of 154 scripts, as well
as 55 new emoji characters.

The new scripts and characters in Version 13.0 add support for modern
language groups in Africa, Pakistan, South Asia, and China:

    * Arabic script additions to write Hausa, Wolof, and other languages
      in Africa, and other additions to write Hindko and Punjabi in Pakistan
    * A character for Syloti Nagri in South Asia
    * Bopomofo additions for Cantonese

Support for scholarly work was extended worldwide, including:

    * Yezidi, historically used in Iraq and Georgia for liturgical
      purposes, with some modern revival of usage
    * Chorasmian, historically used in Central Asia across Uzbekistan,
      Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan to write an extinct Eastern Iranian
      language
    * Dives Akuru, historically used in the Maldives until the 20th century
    * Khitan Small Script, historically used in northern China

Popular symbol additions include:

    * 55 emoji characters, including several new emoji for smileys,
      gender neutral people, animals, and the potted plant. For the full
      list of new emoji characters, see emoji additions for Unicode 13.0
      <http://www.unicode.org/emoji/charts/emoji-released.html>, and
      Emoji Counts
      <http://www.unicode.org/emoji/charts-13.0/emoji-counts.html>. For
      a detailed description of support for emoji characters by the
      Unicode Standard, see UTS #51, Unicode Emoji
      <http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/tr51-16.html>.
    * Six Creative Commons license symbols that are used to describe
      functions, permissions, and concepts related to intellectual
      property that have widespread use on the web
    * Two Vietnamese reading marks that mark ideographs as having a
      distinct, colloquial reading
    * 214 graphic characters that provide compatibility with various
      home computers from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s and with early
      teletext broadcasting standards

Support for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) unified ideographs was
enhanced in Version 13.0 by the addition of 4,939 characters in
Extension G, which is the first block to be encoded in Plane 3, as well
as by significant corrections and improvements to the Unihan database.
Changes to Unihan include updated regular expressions for many
properties, the addition of several new properties, and the removal of
three obsolete provisional properties. See UAX #38, Unicode Han Database
(Unihan) <https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr38/tr38-29.html> for more
information on the updates.

Important chart font updates, including:

    * An update to the code charts for the Adlam script, now using the
      Ebrima font. That font has an improved design and has gained
      widespread acceptance in the user community.
    * A completely updated font for the CJK Radicals Supplement and the
      Kangxi Radicals blocks. This font is also used to show the
      radicals in the CJK unified ideographs code charts, as well as in
      the radical-stroke indexes.

Additional support for lesser-used languages and scholarly work was
extended, including:

    * A character used in Sinhala to write Sanskrit

Unicode properties and specifications determine the behavior of text on
computers and phones. Changes in Version 13.0 include the following
Unicode Standard Annexes and Technical Standards that have notable
modifications:

Five important Unicode annexes updated for Version 13.0:

    * UAX #14, Unicode Linebreaking Algorithm
      <http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr14/tr14-45.html>
    * UAX #29, Unicode Text Segmentation
      <https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr29/tr29-37.html>
    * UAX #31, Unicode Identifier and Pattern Syntax
      <http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr31/tr31-33.html>
    * UAX #38, Unicode Han Database (Unihan)
      <https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr38/tr38-29.html>
    * UAX #45, U-Source Ideographs
      <http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr45/tr45-23.html>

Three important Unicode specifications updated for Version 13.0:

    * UTS #10, Unicode Collation Algorithm
      <http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr10/tr10-43.html> — sorting
      Unicode text
    * UTS #39, Unicode Security Mechanisms
      <http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr39/tr39-22.html> — reducing
      Unicode spoofing
    * UTS #46, Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing
      <https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr46/tr46-25.html> — compatible
      processing of non-ASCII URLs

The Unicode Standard is the foundation for all modern software and
communications around the world, including operating systems, browsers,
laptops, and smart phones—plus the Internet and Web (URLs, HTML, XML,
CSS, JSON, etc.). The Unicode Standard, its associated standards, and
data form the foundation for CLDR and ICU releases.

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/Over 140,000 characters are available for adoption
<http://unicode.org/consortium/adopt-a-character.html> to help the
Unicode Consortium’s work on digitally disadvantaged languages/

[badge] <http://unicode.org/consortium/adopt-a-character.html>

http://blog.unicode.org/2020/03/announcing-unicode-standard-version-130.html

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