Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) documents on Egyptian Hieroglyphic 2016

I thought it would be useful to compile a list of documents relating to Ancient Egyptian in the 2016 Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) document registry. I've added a few notes for explanation.

UTC meets every three months so I've included minutes of the meetings where Egyptian has been on the agenda. Only one formal proposal was made during the year but there were various drafts, discussion documents and comments about the hieroglyphic writing system and the hieroglyph repertoire.

Following the I&E Cambridge 2016 meeting in July, it was agreed that discussions on Ancient Egyptian and Unicode would take place on the "Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the UCS" mailing list (see blog post Informatique et Égyptologie - Cambridge - 2016). If you are interested in following progress or feel you have something to contribute to digital hieroglyphic developments at any level I recommend you join the mailing list.

I also hope to continue to track developments on this blog as the pieces of the puzzle come together this year.


January to March

• L2/16-018 Proposal to encode three control characters for Egyptian Hieroglyphs (revised); Bob Richmond, Andrew Glass; 2016-01-27
• L2/16-028 Preliminary draft of the extended Egyptian Hieroglyphs repertoire; Michel Suignard; 2016-01-21
• L2/16-037 Recommendations to UTC #146 January 2016 on Script Proposals; Deborah Anderson, et al; 2016-01-24
• L2/16-004 UTC #146 Minutes; Lisa Moore; 2016-02-01

Summary. The L2/16-018 proposal was a clarification of L2/15-123 "Proposal to encode three control characters for Egyptian Hieroglyphs (revised); Bob Richmond; 2015-05-04" addressing all feedback received to date. This proposal was put out to ballot as a UTC recommendation from meeting #146.

April to June

• L2/16-079 Preliminary draft for the encoding of an extended Egyptian Hieroglyphs repertoire; Michel Suignard; 2016-04-20
• L2/16-090 Comments on three control characters for Egyptian Hieroglyphs; Mark-Jan Nederhof, Vinodh Rajan with additional comments by Richter et al (TLA project) and a note by Polis and Rosmorduc (Ramses Project). 2016-04-25.
• L2/16-104 Observations: L2/16-090 [Egyptian]; Bob Richmond; 2016-05-02
• L2/16-121 UTC #147 Minutes; Lisa Moore; 2016-05-20

Summary. Glass, Nederhof, Richmond participated by phone in UTC discussion on Egyptian repertoire and controls at UTC #147. Detailed discussion continued at I&E Cambridge 2016 in July.

July to September

• L2/16-177 A comprehensive system of control characters for Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic text (preliminary version); Mark-Jan Nederhof; 2016-06-30
• L2/16-199 A suggestion ... for Ancient Egyptian; William Overington; 2016-07-21
• L2/16-210 A system of control characters for Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic text; Mark-Jan Nederhof, et al; 2016-07-25
• L2/16-204 Recently Closed Action Items (since 2016-05-05); Rick McGowan; 2016-07-25
• L2/16-214 An Extension to the three control characters for Egyptian Hieroglyphs and some additional remarks; Bob Richmond; 2016-08-01
• L2/16-216 Recommendations to UTC #148 August 2016 on Script Proposals; Deborah Anderson, et al; 2016-08-01
• L2/16-218 Brief Report from Cambridge meeting of Egyptologists and Update; Deborah Anderson; 2016-08-01
• L2/16-227 The Universal Hieroglyphic Writing System: Consensus and possible compromise; Bob Richmond; 2016-08-04
• L2/16-231 Proposal for Ancient Egyptian encoding in Unicode; Serge Rosmorduc, et al; 2016-08-04
• L2/16-233 Addendum to: A system of control characters for Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic text; Mark-Jan Nederhof, et al; 2016-08-05
• L2/16-203 UTC #148 Minutes; Lisa Moore; 2016-08-18
• L2/16-250 Preliminary proposal to encode Möller's Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the SMP (WG2 N4741); Michael Everson; 2016-09-14
• L2/16-251 Preliminary Mapping table of Möller's Egyptian Hieroglyphs (WG2 N4742 ; see also associated spreadsheet); Deborah Anderson; 2016-09-12
• L2/16-257 Source analysis of an extended Egyptian Hieroglyphs repertoire (Hieroglyphica); Michel Suignard; 2016-09-20

Summary. Discussions at I&E Cambridge 2016 through to UTC#148 yielded various suggestions for extending the L2/16-018 Proposal, notably considering rare quadrat structures and extending scope to address vertical writing issues along with associated tall quadrat orthography in horizontal writing. At UTC#148 there was consensus on use of the EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH HORIZONTAL JOINER and EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH VERTICAL JOINER proposed controls but that the EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH LIGATURE JOINER should be suspended in favour of investigating more elaborate  schemes. Monograms and other more complex arrangements not well-suited to controls to be treated as part of hieroglyph repertoire development.

October to December

• L2/16-298 Draft additional repertoire for ISO/IEC 10646:2016 (5th ed.) Amendment 1.2 (WG2 N4770); Michel Suignard; 2016-10-27
• L2/16-307 Towards an Expansion of the Unicode Hieroglyph repertoire; Bob Richmond; 2016-10-28
• L2/16-326 Recently Closed Action Items (since 2016-07-25); Rick McGowan; 2016-11-06
• L2/16-342 Recommendations to UTC #149 November 2016 on Script Proposals; Deborah Anderson, et al 2016-11-07.
• L2/16-325 UTC #149 Minutes; Lisa Moore; 2016-11-18

Summary. L2/16-298 draft allocates a block 13430-1343F Egyptian Hieroglyphs Format Controls with two characters defined: U+13430 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH HORIZONTAL JOINER and U+13431 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH VERTICAL JOINER and as things stand these are to be part of the repertoire of Unicode 10.0 (Summer 2017). Other repertoire and writing system issues are still being investigated and I expect activity to continue at 2016 levels during this year.

Bob Richmond