Unicode 9.0.0

Ray Larabie
Ray Larabie Posts: 1,436
edited June 2016 in Type Business
(sorry, posted in the wrong section)

It's still a few days before Unicode 9.0.0 but not too early to start talking about all the new goodies.

I noticed Scope One has the bitcoin symbol ₿ maybe 20B4?. Has anyone else started adding these? I remember seeing articles last year claiming that it was official but it had only been proposed. In the currency symbols section there's a slight change to the Georgian Lari Sign 20BE ₾ but 20BF is still blank.

Does anyone know anything about the Cyrillic Extended C glyphs? Current or historical?

Latin Extended D has A7AE which looks like a T over a turned T.

New Enclosed alphanumerics...for camera displays?

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Comments

  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 1,998
    …the bitcoin symbol…

    I see little reason to include Bitcoin symbols. Performance problems with Bitcoin have depressed prices and media interest. Declining media coverage means most periodicals won’t use the symbol enough that people recognize it. 90% of Bitcoin trading happens in China, mostly on two exchanges. So I don’t see much need for the Bitcoin symbol in Latin fonts at all. The exception being specialty publications that can afford to commission the symbol should they need it.

  • Jeff Kellem
    Jeff Kellem Posts: 65
    The Bitcoin currency symbol did get approved as ₿ (uni20BF) for a future version of Unicode, back on 2 November 2015 and is still listed on the Pipeline Table. I included the glyph in my February 2016 release of 1403 Vintage Mono Pro, just because. The Georgian Lari currency symbol ₾ (uni20BE) change is for design adjustments from a referenced design manual.

    The Cyrillic Extended C block includes historical variants (as listed in the description of that block) used in Church Slavonic texts, accepted 6 August 2014.

    Those Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement block additions are related to Japanese television standard ARIB STD-B62 (also noted in the character descriptions in the chart). Oh, and if you don't have a client who cares about Unifon, then you may not need to worry about the Latin Extended D addition uniA7AE. 

    It's also often worth reviewing Andrew West’s What’s New in Unicode posts.
  • Igor Freiberger
    Igor Freiberger Posts: 279
    edited June 2016
    Cyrillic Extended C brings just historical letters for now. Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement follows industry symbols regarding audio and video standards and features. The A7AE is a kind of I, so I believe its design would use narrower upper- and lower-bars than T. Also note that its inclusion in any font needs the pairing 026A. The four additions to Miscellaneous Technical block seems important to any symbol font.

    Regarding currencies, Scope One is quite up-to-date but not a good reference on this matter. It includes Bitcoin sign while omitting Dram, Tenge, Manat, Lari, and Ruble. And its Tugrik sign is questionable.
  • Denis Moyogo Jacquerye
    Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Posts: 197
    A7AE Ɪ is the uppercase of 026A ɪ. See http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2012/12270-n4297-beta-etc.pdf.
    That letters is a capital i that always has serifs (or top and bottom bars if you prefer). The lowercase is used in IPA, the uppercase and lowercase has been used in some Kulango publications in Côte d’Ivoire and in Unifon. The lowercase must always have serifs (or bars) as well.

    The Unicode character name of A7AE is LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SMALL CAPITAL I because the name of its lowercase 026A is LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL I... which can be confusing. The lowercase was named small capital i because in a serif font, it is like a small capital i.
    Some sans serif fonts have 026A without any serifs (i.e. top and bottom bars) which is incorrect and completely unusable.

    As far as I know, the uppercase has only been used in sans serif fonts where the capital I and lowercase i have no serif and therefore the capital A7AE and its lowercase 026A are clearly distinguishable from I and i. The serif reference glyph used in the Unicode chart was created to match the other reference glyphs in the chart.
  • Denis Moyogo Jacquerye
    Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Posts: 197
    For the Cyrillic Extended C characters see http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2014/14196-slavonic.pdf.
    The characters 1C80...1C88 are historical (used in early Church Slavonic printed books published between 1550 and 1700) and current (used by Russian Old Ritualists and the Russian Orthodox Church).
  • Samuil Simonov
    Samuil Simonov Posts: 110
    Cyrillic Extended-C is a useful block if you're implementing a pre-Petrine ustav or poluustav typeface and want to avoid stylistic alternates or PUA. In other words, a very niche use case.

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