Unicode Consortium announced on Tuesday that the Unicode Standard version 7.0 is finally available, with an added 2,834 characters and 250 new Emoji symbols.
"Version 7.0 of the Unicode Standard is now available, adding 2,834 new characters. This latest version adds the new currency symbols for the Russian ruble and Azerbaijani manat, approximately 250 emoji (pictographic symbols), many other symbols, and 23 new lesser-used and historic scripts, as well as character additions to many existing scripts. These additions extend support for written languages of North America, China, India, other Asian countries, and Africa," the company announced in a blog post.
The Unicode Standard is a character coding system designed to support the global exchange, processing, and display of written texts for various languages and technical fields.
Software makers will be required to release a support patch for their products so consumers can use these added characters. The Unicode Consortium members currently include Google, Apple, Microsoft, and many other industry leaders.
Users hope it won't take long before they can see the new characters in iOS, Android, OS X and Windows, Ars Tehcnica reported.
Significant additions for the emoji list were the emoji for spy, man in business suit levitating, hot pepper, raised hand with part between the middle and ring finger, and the reversed hand with middle finger extended. The emoji list also had emojis for outdated technological gadgets such as fax, old personal computer, and soft shell floppy disk.
Some new emoji representing racially diverse characters were not included in the update. Although there were some emojis depicting skin colors, these additions did not necessarily create a distinction between black, white and colored skin icons. But, expect more changes to come as the developers were constantly working on updating the database. Perhaps these racially-sensitive icons might be included in the next version.
