L2/09-177


Title: WG2 Consent Docket
Source: Ken Whistler
Date: May 1, 2009


Following my usual procedure, I have rolled up all items from the
latest WG2 meeting (WG2 #54, Dublin, April 20 - 24, 2009)
for which there is a synchronization issue that the UTC needs to
address.

This WG2 meeting progressed 3 amendments:

Amendment 6: The disposition of comments was completed for FPDAM 6,
             and an FDAM ballot will be issued soon.
             
Amendment 7: The disposition of comments was completed for PDAM 7,
             and an FPDAM ballot will be issued soon.
             
Amendment 8: A *new* PDAM ballot will be issued for a 8th amendment.
             
For the overall summary of the repertoire for those three amendments,
pending production of the actual amendments, you can refer
to:

WG2 N3625 (= L2/09-172) Amd6 post Dublin charts

WG2 N3626 (= L2/09-173) Amd7-8 post Dublin charts
                          
In the consent docket I have organized the issues
by which amendment they are associated with, to help
keep things straight. Under current plans, the new repertoire for 
Amendment 6 will be targeted for Unicode Version 5.2. The new 
repertoire for Amendment 7 and Amendment 8 will be targeted for a future 
version of Unicode -- that one most likely Version 6.0.

First, I start with the changes pertaining to Amd 6. These
changes are now done deals, because Amd 6 is going to its
FDAM ballot, and no technical changes will be allowed. For
these changes, the UTC simply needs to reconcile its approvals
to get back in sync. 

================================================================

A. Name change for U+1CD4 (Amd 6)

The name of this character has been changed several times during
the ballot review process. The name finally accepted for Amd 6
is:

U+1CD4 VEDIC SIGN YAJURVEDIC MIDLINE SVARITA

Recommendation: Approve this revised name for U+1CD4.

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B. Name change for U+A9C0 (Amd 6)

The name of this character had a typo in it, and was corrected
to:

U+A9C0 JAVANESE PANGKON

Recommendation: Approve this revised name for U+A9C0.

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C. Name changes for two Old South Arabian characters (Amd 6)

The names for two Old South Arabian letters were changed
as follows:

U+10A6A OLD SOUTH ARABIAN LETTER SAMEKH
    --> OLD SOUTH ARABIAN LETTER SAT
    
U+10A6F OLD SOUTH ARABIAN LETTER SIN
    --> OLD SOUTH ARABIAN LETTER SAMEKH
    
Recommendation: Approved these two revised names.

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D. Moved code points for 6 ARIB symbols (Amd 6)

WG2 accepted ballot comments to move code points for 6 of
the ARIB symbols balloted in the 26XX Miscellaneous Symbols
block. One exclamation mark symbol was moved into the
Dingbats block, and 5 map symbols were moved into the
Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows block. The relevant changes are:

26CE --> 2757 HEAVY EXCLAMATION MARK SYMBOL
26E2 --> 2B55 HEAVY LARGE CIRCLE
26E4 --> 2B56 HEAVY OVAL WITH OVAL INSIDE
26E5 --> 2B57 HEAVY CIRCLE WITH CIRCLE INSIDE
26E6 --> 2B58 HEAVY CIRCLE
26E7 --> 2B59 HEAVY CIRCLED SALTIRE

Recommendation: Approve the 6 new code points for these characters.

==================================================================

E. Moved one ARIB broadcasting symbol from 32XX block (Amd 6)

WG2 moved SQUARED KATAKANA DE into the new Enclosed Ideographic
Supplement block, as part of a rearrangement of the ARIB symbols
related to broadcasting, to put them into a more rational
order, reflecting their order in the ARIB standard. As part of
this restructuring, U+32FF SQUARED KATAKANA DE was moved.
The relevant change is:

32FF --> 1F213 SQUARED KATAKANA DE

Recommendation: Approve the new code point for this character.

==================================================================

F. Reordering of ARIB broadcasting and baseball symbols (Amd 6)

FPDAM 6 ordered the squared ideographs and ideographs with tortoise
shell brackets (broadcasting and baseball symbols from the ARIB
standard) in the Unicode order of the ideographs in their
decompositions. (The UTC-approved ranges in question are
1F210..1F230 and 1F240..1F248.) WG2 agreed that it made more
sense to preserve their ARIB order, for the most part, which
groups them semantically into a group of broadcasting symbols
and a group of baseball symbols. This resulted in a reordering
of the ranges. Rather than list all 42 moved code points, it
is easier to refer to Michel's Amd 6 post-Dublin charts,
L2/09-172 (= WG2 N3625).

Recommendation: Approve the revised code points for 1F210..1F231
(accounting for the insertion of the SQUARED KATAKANA DE in
that range) and 1F240..1F248, as shown in L2/09-172.

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G. Addition of one Myanmar character. (Amd 6)

WG2 added one extended Myanmar tone character, based on WG2 N3594
(= L2/09-100):

U+AA7B MYANMAR SIGN PAO KAREN TONE

Recomendation: Approve this new character.

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Moving on to Amendment 7, these are changes going to FPDAM ballot,
so the UTC has some leeway still in deciding what to consent to
and what to object to.

================================================================

H. Batak. (Amd 7)

The Batak script was balloted in PDAM 7, but has not yet been
approved by the UTC. In response to U.S. ballot comments, WG2
agreed to remove the two most objectionable characters from
the repertoire. The result is 56 Batak characters (down from
58). At this point, while some people still object to the
various Batak variant forms encoded as characters, I think the
most prudent way forward is for the UTC to now approve the
Batak script as it will be balloted in FPDAM 7.

Recommendation: Approve 56 Batak characters, in the ranges
U+1BC0..U+1BF3 and U+1BFC..U+1BFF, in a new Batak block
(U+1BC0..U+1BFF), with names, glyphs, and code points as
shown in L2/09-173 (= WG2 N3626).

================================================================

I. Name and code point change for archaic Hiragana letter. (Amd 7)

WG2 agreed to the Japanese NB request to move HIRAGANA LETTER YE
from the Hiragana block into the new block for historic kana,
and to change the character name:

U+3097  HIRAGANA LETTER YE
-->
U+1B001 HIRAGANA LETTER ARCHAIC YE

Recommendation: Approve the new code point and name.

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J. Name changes for Arabic pedagogical symbols. (Amd 7)

WG2 agreed to the recommendations of Anshuman Pandey in L2/09-110
for name changes to the Arabic pedagogical symbols in the
range U+FBB2..U+FBC1, to reflect general Arabic names, instead
of Urdu-specific names. (That document, in turn, was largely
based on the suggestions by Roozbeh Pournader in L2/09-011.)

The name changes were as in L2/09-110, with one exception:

FBBC --> ARABIC SYMBOL DOUBLE VERTICAL BAR BELOW

The UTC has not yet approved those name changes, but has
discussed them.

Recommendation: Approve the new names for U+FBB2..U+FBC1,
as documented in L2/09-173 (= WG2 N3626).

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K. Tangut. (Amd 7)

On the basis of the Tangut ad hoc report (L2/09-169 = WG2 N3629),
WG2 agreed to remove Tangut from ballot, pending further research
and discussion, anticipating that revised proposals will be
submitted for the next meeting. This doesn't actually impact
the UTC as yet, as WG2 didn't formally decide on changing any
allocations. Changes will happen later.

Recommendation: Just take note and participate in further
Tangut review. No formal action is needed yet regarding
synchronization.

================================================================

Moving on to Amendment 8, WG2 approved addition of alchemical
symbols, Ethiopic extensions, and several small collections
already approved by the UTC. No action is needed for those.
However, WG2 also approved a couple other large collections
not yet approved by the UTC, and there were very significant
changes made for the collection of emoji. Details follow.

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L. CJK Extension D. (Amd 8)

WG2 approved the 223 CJK Unified Ideographs in the "Urgently
Needed Characters" collection as CJK Extension D. These are
in the range 2B740..2B81E, in a new block "CJK Unified
Ideographs Extension D" (2B740..2B81F).

Recommendation: Hold off on approval until our experts have
a chance to review the submitted set in the ballot. (This
approach has precedent -- it is how we dealt with CJK
Extension C, which did, indeed, have some problems that
needed to be dealt with.)

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M. Bamum. (Amd 8)

WG2 accepted a collection of 569 Bamum characters for Old
Bamum. These were approved for a new block, "Bamum Supplement"
(16800..16A3F). The repertoire is based on WG2 N3597 (= L2/09-102),
which was a revision of WG2 N3564 (= L2/09-019), the document
that the UTC reviewed. Note that this is the first time that
a script other than Han has been split between the BMP and
another plane. The UTC should take a look at
L2/09-102, but I think it addresses most of the issues that
have been raised about Old Bamum characters, and it is
unlikely that the encoding could be improved much.

Recommendation: Approve the repertoire based on L2/09-102.

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O. Emoji. (Amd 8)

Almost all of the emoji approved for encoding by the UTC were
also approved by WG2 and will go into ballotting in Amd 8.
In addition, 150 other symbols of various types were added
based on Ireland and Germany's joint proposal, WG2 N3607
(= L2/09-114). The resultant changes are very complex, and
are the subject of detailed discussion in the Emoji ad-hoc
meeting report, L2/09-153 (= WG2 N3636).

Recommendation: Deal with this topic separately from the
WG2 Consent Docket, and then approve the resulting repertoire
as documented in L2/09-173 (= WG2 N3626), rather than trying
to piece it all together again as delta approvals.

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P. LATIN LETTER MIDDLE DOT. (Amd 8)

WG2 approved yet another middle dot, this one ostensibly for
transliteration for Phags-Pa, based on WG2 N3567R (= L2/09-031).

A78F LATIN LETTER MIDDLE DOT

Recommendation: Review and discuss the rationale offered in
L2/09-031, but hold off on approval, pending further
investigation.

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Q. UPA diacritic mark. (Amd 8)

WG2 approved one combining mark for UPA, based on WG2 N3571
(= L2/09-028):

1DFC COMBINING DOUBLE INVERTED BREVE BELOW

Recommendation: Approve this additional character.

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R. UPA modifier letters. (Amd 8)

Also based on WG2 N3571 (= L2/09-028), WG2 approved the addition
of 9 modifier letters:

A7F2 LATIN SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER H
A7F3 LATIN SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER K
A7F4 LATIN SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER L
A7F5 LATIN SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER M
A7F6 LATIN SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER N
A7F7 LATIN SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER P
A7F8 LATIN SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER S
A7F9 LATIN SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER T
A7FA LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL TURNED M

Recommendation: Approve these additional characters.

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