Did they give a reason why it was declined? Was it some bureaucratic "form not filled in correct" thing, or are they actually against the concept of it?
To elaborate: it should be plain obvious that not every Emoji proposal can be accepted even though all of them are correctly filed, as there would be too many Emojis there then. So there has to be some threshold, and that threshold is mostly stipulated by vendors' willingness to process new Emoji characters for designing fonts and updating softwares in time.
That list only includes suggestions that were seriously considered and voted on.
Since it's a vote, there is no single official 'reason' for rejection. If I had to guess: it would be confusing to anyone who didn't grow up with American TV shows.
I would be more interested if they are ever going to cancel HAN unification. Looking at their "Factors for Exclusion" list it could be summarized by "we made some mistakes in past but are sticking to it" :D
If the seahorse emoji is introduced, we will have to train new foundation models. The costs connected to the introduction of the seahorse emoji will be in the billions.
You're absolutely right—the seahorse emoji was added in Unicode version 19.0.0 after OpenAI purchased the Unicode Consortium and converted it to a for-profit corporation.
As an example of having not-exactly-a-character as Unicode "characters", it is rather rare that musical symbols are embedded in running texts (which is a primary litmus test for encoding), but musical symbols are typically rendered with existing font technology so there are needs for standardized "character" codes, as SMuFL [1] does. In fact Unicode 18 will get tons of musical symbols that have been in SMuFL for a long time but not yet in Unicode [2].
> how do they handle changes in scripts, for example if new proto-cuneiform or seal script symbols are discovered
They get added in the next Unicode revision.
In Unicode you have "blocks" [0] that are often bigger than the number of characters in a script, language or function. There are usually also space for new blocks between unrelated blocks.
For example, in the case of cuneiform, it was introduced in Unicode 5.0, and there have been revisions in 7.0 and 8.0 [1]
> if not is there really a point to include everything possible in unicode ?
Needing to load three fonts to show a single document that mixes vastly different character sets is still infinitely better than not being able to have those different characters in the same .txt or .md file at all
> how many space is remaining for new alphabet and smileys ?
Unicode can encode about 1100k code points, and about 800k of those are currently unassigned and available for future scripts or characters
The internet needs a "tin foil hat" emoji, but two proposals have been rejected :(
Emoji proposals and status: https://unicode.org/emoji/emoji-proposals-status.html
Did they give a reason why it was declined? Was it some bureaucratic "form not filled in correct" thing, or are they actually against the concept of it?
Vendors-have-no-capacity-to-handle-more-than-handful-number-of-emojis-per-each-release thing.
To elaborate: it should be plain obvious that not every Emoji proposal can be accepted even though all of them are correctly filed, as there would be too many Emojis there then. So there has to be some threshold, and that threshold is mostly stipulated by vendors' willingness to process new Emoji characters for designing fonts and updating softwares in time.
That list only includes suggestions that were seriously considered and voted on.
Since it's a vote, there is no single official 'reason' for rejection. If I had to guess: it would be confusing to anyone who didn't grow up with American TV shows.
Eh, it's not like there are hundreds of emojises pretty much exclusively tied to Japanese culture.
What everyone actually cares about — new emojis!
* Cracking face
* Left/Right thumb sign
* Monarch butterfly
* Pickle
* Lighthouse
* Meteor
* Eraser
* Net with handle
Other great additions:
- Left and Right parenthesis with middle ring [1]
- A wiggly exclamation mark expressing mirth or laughter [1]
- Cuneiform numerals, including lots of arranged dots that might be useful in other contexts [2]
- New variations of "measured angle" and "sector" [3]
- A transparent cube and a white cube [4]
Also a couple new combining marks
And for anyone who wants to see what the reference images for the new emojis look like:
Lighthouse: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-18.0/U180-1F680.p...
Other new Emojis: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-18.0/U180-1FA70.p...
1: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-18.0/U180-2E00.pd...
2: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-18.0/U180-12550.p...
3: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-18.0/U180-1CEC0.p...
4: https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-18.0/U180-1F780.p...
I would be more interested if they are ever going to cancel HAN unification. Looking at their "Factors for Exclusion" list it could be summarized by "we made some mistakes in past but are sticking to it" :D
Han Unification was effectively "fixed" by Ideographic Variation Sequences, so no.
Still no seahorse
If the seahorse emoji is introduced, we will have to train new foundation models. The costs connected to the introduction of the seahorse emoji will be in the billions.
You're absolutely right—the seahorse emoji was added in Unicode version 19.0.0 after OpenAI purchased the Unicode Consortium and converted it to a for-profit corporation.
looking at the changes it makes me wonder:
- is there an usable font the cover all unicode ?
- if not is there really a point to include everything possible in unicode ?
- how many space is remaining for new alphabet and smileys ?
- how do they handle changes in scripts, for example if new proto-cuneiform or seal script symbols are discovered ?
As an example of having not-exactly-a-character as Unicode "characters", it is rather rare that musical symbols are embedded in running texts (which is a primary litmus test for encoding), but musical symbols are typically rendered with existing font technology so there are needs for standardized "character" codes, as SMuFL [1] does. In fact Unicode 18 will get tons of musical symbols that have been in SMuFL for a long time but not yet in Unicode [2].
[1] https://www.smufl.org/
[2] https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2025/25017-miscellaneous-musical...
> how do they handle changes in scripts, for example if new proto-cuneiform or seal script symbols are discovered
They get added in the next Unicode revision.
In Unicode you have "blocks" [0] that are often bigger than the number of characters in a script, language or function. There are usually also space for new blocks between unrelated blocks.
For example, in the case of cuneiform, it was introduced in Unicode 5.0, and there have been revisions in 7.0 and 8.0 [1]
--
> if not is there really a point to include everything possible in unicode ?
Needing to load three fonts to show a single document that mixes vastly different character sets is still infinitely better than not being able to have those different characters in the same .txt or .md file at all
> how many space is remaining for new alphabet and smileys ?
Unicode can encode about 1100k code points, and about 800k of those are currently unassigned and available for future scripts or characters
The Noto fonts have great coverage: https://notofonts.github.io/overview/
No toki pona?
For now, follow UCSUR: https://sona.pona.la/wiki/Under-ConScript_Unicode_Registry
Does it need any additional code points?