The Ideographic Research Group (IRG), formerly called the Ideographic Rapporteur Group, is a subgroup of Working Group 2 (WG2) of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 (SC 2), the subcommittee of the Joint Technical Committee of

ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Iso ...

and IEC which is responsible for developing standards within the field of coded character sets. IRG is composed of experts from China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and other countries and regions that use

Han characters Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji' ...

, as well as experts representing the

Unicode Consortium The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View, California. Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the Unicode Standard which was developed with the intentio ...

. The group is responsible for coordinating the addition of new

CJK unified ideographs The Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) scripts share a common background, collectively known as CJK characters. In the process called Han unification, the common (shared) characters were identified and named CJK Unified Ideographs. As of Unicode ...

to the Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (ISO/IEC 10646) and the

Unicode Standard Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, whic ...

. The group meets twice a year for 4-5 days each time, and reports its activity to the subsequent meeting of WG2.

History

The precursor to the Ideographic Rapporteur Group was the CJK Joint Research Group (CJK-JRG), which was established in 1990. In October 1993 this group was established as a subgroup of WG2 under SC2 with the name Ideographic Rapporteur Group (IRG). In June 2019 SC2 changed the name of the subgroup to Ideographic Research Group (IRG). The IRG rapporteur from 1993 to 2004 was Zhang Zhoucai (张轴材), who had been convenor and chief editor of CJK-JRG from 1990 to 1993. Since 2004 the rapporteur has been Professor Lu Qin (陸勤) of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. In June 2018 the title of "Rapporteur" was changed to "Convenor".

Overview

IRG is responsible for reviewing proposals for adding new

to the Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (ISO/IEC 10646) and the

, and submitting consolidated proposals for sets of CJK unified ideographs to WG2, which are then processed for encoding in the ISO/IEC 10646 and Unicode standards by SC2 and the Unicode Technical Committee respectively. National and liaison bodies of SC2 that participate in IRG include China,

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

, Japan,

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and T ...

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eas ...

Macau Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a p ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

, Taipei Computer Association,

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

, and

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

. As of Unicode version 15.0, the IRG has been responsible for submitting several blocks of CJK unified ideographs and compatibility ideographs for encoding: *

CJK Unified Ideographs The Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) scripts share a common background, collectively known as CJK characters. In the process called Han unification, the common (shared) characters were identified and named CJK Unified Ideographs. As of Unicode ...

(added in Unicode 1.0) * CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A (added in Unicode 3.0) *

CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B is a Unicode block A Unicode block is one of several contiguous ranges of numeric character codes ( code points) of the Unicode character set that are defined by the Unicode Consortium for administrative and ...

(added in Unicode 3.1) * CJK Unified Ideographs Extension C (added in Unicode 5.2) * CJK Unified Ideographs Extension D (added in Unicode 6.0) * CJK Unified Ideographs Extension E (added in Unicode 8.0) * CJK Unified Ideographs Extension F (added in Unicode 10.0) * CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G (added in Unicode 13.0) * CJK Unified Ideographs Extension H (added in Unicode 15.0) * CJK Compatibility Ideographs (added in Unicode 1.0) * CJK Compatibility Ideographs Supplement (added in Unicode 3.1) Since 2015, proposed characters submitted by IRG member bodies have been processed in batches called "IRG Working Sets". Each working set undergoes several years of review by IRG experts before official submission of the working set to WG2 as a new block. Once accepted by WG2, the proposed block is processed according to the individual procedures followed by ISO/IEC JTC1 SC2 and the

Unicode Technical Committee The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View, California. Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the Unicode Standard which was developed with the intent ...

(UTC). In the case of SC2, this involves balloting of ISO member bodies. The following working sets have been processed by IRG: * WS2015 became CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G (Unicode 13.0, 2020); * WS2017 became CJK Unified Ideographs Extension H (Unicode 15.0, 2022); * WS2021 may become CJK Unified Ideographs Extension I at a future date.

References

External links

IRG
homepage, including meeting documents and Working Set revisions
Working Set 2015
Online Review Tool
Working Set 2017
Online Review Tool
Working Set 2021
Online Review Tool {{Unicode navigation Unicode International Organization for Standardization Internationalization and localization