What's the process for proposing a symbol in the Unicode table?

[Asmus Freytag]

On 2/17/2024 5:35 PM, James Kass via Unicode wrote:
>
>
> On 2024-02-17 11:26 PM, Freek Dijkstra via Unicode wrote:
>> I almost get the feeling that Unicode has overlooked a (small) 
>> category of these symbols, and only included the English ones. Sadly, 
>> my knowledge of those other symbols is limited, so I can only make a 
>> proposal for the Flourish of Approval. But just to check: Unicode 
>> codepoints represent a glyph, not a meaning, right? So the English ✓ 
>> and Swedish ✓ have the same codepoint, even though their meaning is 
>> different?
>
> Unicode encodes characters rather than glyphs.  Please see 
> http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr17/tr17-3.html for more information, 
> specifically section 2.1 for illustrations.  The check mark (✓) has 
> one code point because of convention:  there was no distinction 
> between Swedish and English usage of the mark in pre-existing 
> character sets.
The exception might be where some local convention uses both a check 
mark and some other shape in alternation. In such cases, there may be an 
argument in favor of considering the other shape a different symbol 
instead of implausibly suggesting that the check mark now has a range of 
acceptable glyph variations that includes the other shape (which would 
come as a surprise to most users of the existing check mark ...).
>
> The Unicode repertoire might be perceived as favoring English symbols, 
> but we need to keep in mind that the original goal of Unicode was to 
> standardize existing character sets into a universal encoding which 
> would serve everyone.  Many of those existing character sets were 
> developed by English speaking users, hence the possible appearance of 
> favoritism.  Likewise, an even larger batch of those existing 
> character sets were developed by “Westerners”, which can give the 
> appearance of favoritism to non-Western users. But over time, many 
> non-English and non-Western characters have been added to the Unicode 
> repertoire because somebody took the time and made the effort to 
> submit an encoding proposal and escort it through the approval process.
>
I agree, there's every reason to identify cases where Unicode lacks a 
way for expressing a local written convention, even outside standard 
orthographic writing. We definitely should not - as a matter of 
principle - rule out local equivalents to widely used marks, just 
because the others are either used in English or have become global.

The symbol discussed here is in much more wide-spread and active use 
than many of the dead alphabets being added; even if it never becomes 
popular outside the Netherlands.

A./