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 may 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 (members only). 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. All other meeting documents are found in the Members Only section on this web site. 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.

Subcommittees

The UTC possesses a number of subcommittees which focus on particular issues and then report back to the UTC:

Bidi Subcommittee, Mark Davis (Google), Chair

Addresses topics of the Standard's support for bidirectional scripts.   (See Unicode Technical Report #9, "Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm.")

Scripts Subcommittee, Rick McGowan (Unicode), Chair

Acts as a collection point for proposed additional characters from any script, and proposed additional symbols. These characters must be accompanied by a submission form. This subcommittee works closely with the Script Encoding Initiative (SEI), and provides the forum for discussion of character validity and a process for approval. See the submission and review process for details and a link to the current Proposal Summary Form.

East Asian Subcommittee, John Jenkins (Apple), Chair

Addresses all issues pertaining to the set of Han-based Far East writing systems and languages. Issues such as additions, changes, tracking the progress of (Han) national character standards come under the domain of this subcommittee. In addition, a representative of this committee represents the Consortium in ISO SC2/WG2/IRG.

Security Subcommittee, Mark Davis (Google), Chair; Michel Suignard (Microsoft), Vice-Chair

Addresses security issues involved with Unicode and software globalization. (See UTR #36: Unicode Security Considerations and UTS #39: Unicode Security Mechanisms).

South Asian Subcommittee, Eric Muller (Adobe), Chair

Addresses encoding issues for scripts and languages of the Indian subcontinent, including scripts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. (Excludes Arabic-based scripts, which are handled by the Bidi Subcommittee.)

Symbols Subcommittee, Markus Scherer (Google), Chair

Discusses and makes recommendations about the encoding of symbols, such as wingdings, train schedule symbols, mobile phone symbols, etc.

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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