UTC Script Encoding Working Group
The goal of the UTC Script Encoding Working Group is to provide recommendations to the
Unicode® Technical Committee (UTC) on encoding proposals and other documents,
outside of CJK or emoji-related topics.
These recommendations reflect the collective discussion of the participants, and are
intended to guide further discussion at the UTC meetings, particularly regarding complex
topics that require an extended, in-depth discussion. Preparation of summary
recommendations makes the decision process during plenary UTC meetings more efficient.
The recommendations are not binding—the Unicode Technical Committee makes
the final decisions on all proposals.
A secondary goal of the Script Encoding Working Group is to assist proposal authors in
updating their proposals to meet the exacting technical requirements of the UTC.
Rather than forwarding a recommendation for a promising, but incomplete, proposal to the UTC,
where the proposal
might simply be rejected for incompleteness, the Script Encoding Working Group is authorized to work with
authors in an iterative process, providing specific feedback for improvement
and suggesting further discussion and updating of the proposal. Such interaction
can assist new proposals authors who may be unfamiliar with the details of
the Unicode Standard or the standardization requirements of the UTC.
The UTC and the Script Encoding Working Group receive many requests to encode
new scripts and characters. Because these committees are volunteer-run groups and have limited resources,
they cannot respond to all requests. Of the submissions received, only full proposals will be
seriously considered.
Proposals are typically reviewed by a member of the Script Encoding Working Group and then discussed
by the full group. Proposals and documents related to proposals, scripts, or individual character issues may take several months before they are discussed within
the Script Encoding Working Group. Any comments arising from the discussion are sent to the author or
are included in the quarterly Script Encoding Working Group report.
In general, only those proposals that are considered “mature” and deemed ready for
review by the Unicode Technical Committee will be posted in the Unicode document register.
For guidance in preparing an encoding proposal, please make use of our templates, to ensure that
any proposal submitted contains all the required information.
See
L2/23-105,
the template for proposing the encoding of a new script,
and
L2/23-104,
the template for proposing the encoding of a new character for
a script already encoded in the Unicode Standard. Also, please carefully review the
information at Submitting Character Proposals.
Finally, a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) is required from every proposal author/co-author as well as any other person or entity claiming intellectual property rights in the proposed scripts or characters. A CLA gives the Consortium the necessary permissions to use the proposal and its content. For further details regarding these requirements and how to sign a CLA, please see both Submitting Character Proposals and The Unicode Consortium Intellectual Property, Licensing & Technical Contribution Policies.
The scope of the Script Encoding Working Group includes all proposals for the encoding
of new scripts, modern or historic, as well as proposals for non-emoji symbols,
punctuation, or notational systems. CJK-related proposals are
handled by the CJK & Unihan group.
Emoji proposals are handled by the
Unicode Emoji Subcommittee.
For a short video describing the work of the Script Encoding Working Group and the script encoding process,
see the YouTube presentation “Scripts and Character Encoding” by Deborah Anderson,
Script Encoding Working Group Chair, accessible from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkUea5gEuV8
This video was part of the “Overview of Internationalization and Unicode Projects” event that
took place on Sept. 28, 2022. To see the full playlist of talks,
go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkUea5gEuV8
To view Deborah Anderson’s and Andrew Glass's slide sets from the May 16, 2023 Unicode webinar presentation on “Documenting and Preserving Languages with Unicode”, which discuss the basics of Unicode encoding, fonts, and keyboards, see the webinar on the Unicode YouTube channel. The slide sets from the presentation are also available, see:
Character Encoding and
Fonts and Keyboards.
For a PDF of the Questions and Answers from the webinar, see:
Questions and Answers from the Unicode webinar.
The Script Encoding Working Group meets on a regular basis, usually
one day a month. Meetings are scheduled in an effort to
guarantee that a full, quarterly report of proposal reviews can be
provided in a timely manner to each meeting of the Unicode Technical Committee.
The Script Encoding Working Group meetings are organized and chaired by Deborah Anderson,
Roozbeh Pournader, and Jan Kučera.
Participation is by language experts from the Unicode Technical Committee
or by permission of the chair. Especially for complex script topics, the Script
Encoding Working Group reaches out to proposal authors, to ensure that their feedback is
part of the process, and so they may answer questions that the proposal reviewers
may have about various character proposals.
Each quarter, before a UTC meeting, the chair of the Script Encoding Working Group prepares a
report for the UTC, encompassing the recommendations of all the Script Encoding Working
Group meetings since the prior UTC. These reports are added to the
UTC document
register as publicly accessible documents.
For convenience in reference, a complete list of all
Script Encoding Working Group reports,
dating back to 2010, is also
maintained.
The Script Encoding Working Group engages in frank discussions regarding complex,
technical content. As a working group reporting to the UTC, it follows the
same general rules regarding confidentiality of meeting discussions. Citing
from the
Technical Group Procedures of the Unicode Consortium,
"Discussions during meetings are confidential and are not to be shared
publicly without explicit permission of the chair."
Intermediate drafts of
the Script Encoding Working Group reports are also confidential, until they can be
vetted and any errors corrected. The final reports, which then
represent the Script Encoding Working Group consensus recommendations, are
public documents.
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