spixi / unicode-proposals

Proposals for new characters to encode and canonic character sequences to register

Unicode Proposals

This repository collects (draft) proposals for new emojis and other Unicode characters.

Emoji

A new emoji can be made in three different ways:

• If rather original, it may require the assignment of an individual codepoint, usually in the upper areas of the Supplementary Multilingual Plane (SMP), U+1F9xy. This usually happens once a year with a new point release of the Unicode Technical Standard (where the next one is version 11.0 in 2018). The deadline for proposals is currently set to the end of June.
• An existing character can be repurposed by adding the Emoji property once and using Variation Selector 16 ‘VS-16’ U+FE0F henceafter.
• There are several types of canonic character sequences which can be registered. The most import type are multiple emojis forced to form a ligature by a Zero-Width Joiner ‘ZWJ’ U+200D between components. Country flags use pairs of Regional Indicator Symbols and are added automatically if ISO 3166-1 changes, whereas their subdivisions are encoded with Tag Characters on a Waving Black Flag base using ISO 3166-2 codes.

The collection also contains templates, related sources, references and other material related to the Unicode standard.

Contribution

You can contribute to an existing issue (e.g. for animals, flags, emoticons or food) or raise a new one to wish for additional proposals. The thing most direly needed in emoji proposals are example graphics that ideally can be used freely (even commercially) and without strong attribution requirements.

Your help is always appreciated, but – for emojis – please read about the Unicode Proposal Process first. (Emojione has published a synopsis that’s probably easier and quicker to read.)

Drafted and Submitted Proposals

See branches and pull requests for more work-in-progress items.

• Fourth wise monkey: Do-No-Evil Monkey

• Missing emoji human body parts, mostly taboo one like genitalia, behind and female breasts

• Make emoji flags for non-countries optional

• Template for an Emoji Proposal

Older white papers

Similar discussions are now found in the repository issues on Github.

• New ZWJ sequences for choosing the primary color of emojis
• Relationship and Family Emojis and Character Sequences
• More ZWJ sequences for emoji professions
• Some ZWJ sequences and some unique emojis to replace current metaphors and line art
• Conventional emoji “short names” (:short_codes:) as HTML named entities
• Evidence of raunchy emoji metaphors in sexting etc.
• Emoji ligatures instead of Tag sequences for subregion flags