Regarding the new Saudi riyal currency symbol

Peter Constable

Many people have noted that the Saudi Arabic Central Bank recently launched a new symbol to represent the Saudi riyal currency. Naturally, people want to start using it right away, and that has led to discussion about redesigning glyphs for an existing Unicode character, U+FDFC RIAL SIGN.

The existing Unicode character U+FDFC RIAL SIGN is not the same character as the new Saudi riyal currency sign, and font vendors should not create fonts that map U+FDFC to the Saudi riyal sign (in any design adaptations). There are several reasons why these characters cannot be confused, not the least of which is that U+FDFC is used to represent the Iranian rial. A new character for the Saudi riyal sign will be encoded in the next version of Unicode; the code point and character name will be included in the Unicode 17.0 Beta which will be available for public review in early May. 

Peter Constable

For more info as to why U+FDFC cannot be used for the new Saudi riyal currency sign, see the following document prepared by the working group under the Unicode Technical Committee that reviews encoding proposals:

SEW recommendation on encoding the SAUDI RIYAL SIGN

Thomas Phinney

Oh! Aside from the design differences concerns, which I would not minimize, I would not have guessed that there are different (1) decompositions and (2) bidi properties for the two characters. Those are a big deal. The right-to-left part in particular could cause some very unexpected behaviors with numerals in an otherwise right-to-left context!

Nadine Chahine

Peter Constable said:

the code point and character name will be included in the Unicode 17.0 Beta which will be available for public review in early May. 

Perfect and thank you for the info! When will we be able to use the new unicode value? Early May or do we need to wait till it's fully adopted?

Peter Constable

A Unicode blog about the riyal was posted late last week with some general guidance about implementations and timelines:

The Unicode Blog: Support for the New Saudi Riyal Currency Symbol

Nadine Chahine said:

Perfect and thank you for the info! When will we be able to use the new unicode value? Early May or do we need to wait till it's fully adopted?

As stated in the above blog, a code point will be documented in the beta that's released in May, and implementers could start developing with that, but there is a risk (albeit small) of changes during the beta review, and so it's recommended that product updates using the new code point not be released until Unicode 17.0 has been finalized and released in September.

Nadine Chahine

Thanks! This is what I was wondering, especially for large clients with a big distribution. Better to be safe and wait till September then. Thank you Peter!

leksendesign

I have a client who needs the new symbol implemented now.

I see Unicode 0x20C1 referenced at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Saudi_Riyal_Symbol.svg and it is currently not allocated to another character. Is this the probable Unicode value and we are just waiting for confirmation? Thank you! 

Thomas Phinney

Yes, U+20C1 is the most likely and currently proposed codepoint. I would not characterize it as completely safe to use, but rather “more likely than not.” It is what the Script Encoding Working Group at Unicode has recommended.

It is documented here: https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2025/25076-sew-recommendations-saudi-riyal.pdf and has been posted in a few other places. Not secret, just not being actively publicized because it is still subject to change.

If it were me, I would be totally willing to use it (“at my own risk”) but I would emphasize to my client, in writing, that the codepoint is preliminary and there is at least some risk of trouble from using it now. Would they be OK and able to cope if it changes in a May? June? September?

Peter Constable

The is the proposed code point, and it's likely the Unicode Technical Committee will assign that at its Q2 meeting later this month. But that code point is not guaranteed until the Unicode Technical Committee makes final decisions for Unicode 17.0 at its Q3 meeting in July. As stated in the blog referenced above (emphasis added),

It is anticipated that UTC will approve the new character for encoding in Unicode Version 17.0, which will be released in September 2025. The Unicode 17.0 Beta will be released for public review in early May, and we expect the Saudi riyal sign will be included there. Details related to the encoding (code point, name, property data) are unlikely to change after the Beta is released. 

There is a small possibility that some changes could be made at the following UTC meeting in July, when technical details for Unicode Version 17.0 are finalized. Some vendors may choose to start working on implementations once the Beta is available, but vendors should not distribute product updates until after Unicode Version 17.0 is finalized.

leksendesign

Great, thank you so much, @Thomas Phinney and @Peter Constable!