The week before last, the Unicode Consortium which manages standards for Unicode and Locale published the 6.0 version of Unicode to their site. These standards represent the common set of symbols and locales software vendors use to internationalize their solutions. Over time, the Unicode Standard set of characters has grown in size from 28,294 assigned graphic and format characters in Version 1.0, to 109,384 characters in Version 6.0. This release represents the first time the full specification has been published online in its entirety.
The new blocks in version 6.0.0 are:
| 0840..085F | Mandaic |
| 1BC0..1BFF | Batak |
| AB00..AB2F | Ethiopic Extended-A |
| 11000..1107F | Brahmi |
| 16800..16A3F | Bamum Supplement |
| 1B000..1B0FF | Kana Supplement |
| 1F0A0..1F0FF | Playing Cards |
| 1F300..1F5FF | Miscellaneous Symbols And Pictographs |
| 1F600..1F64F | Emoticons |
| 1F680..1F6FF | Transport And Map Symbols |
| 1F700..1F77F | Alchemical Symbols |
| 2B740..2B81F | CJK Unified Ideographs Extension D |
Specifically added:
- 2,088 characters, including
- over 1,000 additional symbols which are especially important for mobile phones
- the new official Indian currency symbol: the Indian Rupee Sign
- 222 additional CJK Unified Ideographs in common use in China, Taiwan, and Japan
- 603 additional characters for African language support, including extensions to the Tifinagh, Ethiopic, and Bamum scripts
- three additional scripts: Mandaic, Batak, and Brahmi
To view all components of this release browse here.