Changes/Unicode 8.0

Unicode 8.0 support

Unicode 8.0 got release on 17th June 2015. It includes 41 new emoji characters (including five modifiers for diversity), 5,771 new ideographs for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, the new Georgian lari currency symbol, and 86 lowercase Cherokee syllables. It also adds letters to existing scripts to support Arwi (the Tamil language written in the Arabic script), the Ik language in Uganda, Kulango in the Côte d’Ivoire, and other languages of Africa. In total, this version adds 7,716 new characters and six new scripts.

Owner

• Name: Mike Fabian Pravin Satpute Siddhesh Poyarekar
• Email: mfabian At redhat DOT com, pravins At fedoraproject DOT org, spoyarek AT redhat DOT com
• Release notes owner:

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora 23
• Last updated: 22 Jun 2015
• Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

Unicode 8.0 got release on 17th June 2015. It includes 41 new emoji characters (including five modifiers for diversity), 5,771 new ideographs for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, the new Georgian lari currency symbol, and 86 lowercase Cherokee syllables. It also adds letters to existing scripts to support Arwi (the Tamil language written in the Arabic script), the Ik language in Uganda, Kulango in the Côte d’Ivoire, and other languages of Africa. In total, this version adds 7,716 new characters and six new scripts.

To get support for these characters in Fedora we will need updates to core libraries Glibc and Lib ICU. We are planning to update our core libraries Glibc and Lib ICU with the help of upstream.

"Update locale data to Unicode 8.0" https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=18568

Benefit to Fedora

With this change, users and developers of Fedora will get Unicode 8.0 support through core libraries. Users will get an updated Unicode data from locales. No new functionality is added. Fedora is the leading distribution when it comes to internationalization. By including this change, Fedora users and developers will get the Unicode 8.0 support exactly on the time.

Scope

• Proposal owners: Work with upstream and file bugs and provide patches where required.

• Other developers: This change will impact glibc, ICU and all applications that uses these libraries. Other Developers do not need to make any changes from their end, but they need to watch how their application behaves with improved localedata. We need proper testing to see that it does not break any application.

• Release engineering: No work required from Release engineering.

• Policies and guidelines: No, this change does not required any updates to Policies or packaging guideline updates.

• Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

Upgrade/compatibility impact

Upgrade will be smooth. Users will get exact things with updated Unicode data.

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

How To Test

• Glibc includes extensive test-case coverage to test localedata changes.
• This change is affecting Unicode characters, so users will notice little effect on rendering if any.
• Glibc is used by rendering engine for determining the type of characters, so again observe rendering and report if any issue.
• Document section provide detailed report regarding change.

User Experience

Users and Developers will get support for Unicode standard 8.0 through locales.

Dependencies

• Upstream release schedule.
• If our patches does not come in upstream, we will try to patch it in Fedora.

Contingency Plan

• Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) Will drop patches from icu and glibc.
• Contingency deadline: Before F23 Beta release eg. Beta freeze.
• Blocks release? No
• Blocks product? product No

Documentation

Will provide it later.