ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2
Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS) - ISO/IEC 10646

ROADMAPS
(a snapshot as of 2014-09-19)
(http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/roadmaps.html)



The intention of the roadmaps document is to show a visual layout of the coding space for further allocations of scripts in ISO/IEC 10646 and in the Unicode Standard. These roadmap layouts are snapshots of scripts and characters that are known as of 2014-09-19 (prior to WG2 meeting no.63 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2014-09-29/10-03). This document is intended to be used as general guideline and does not attempt to make detailed allocations of characters.

Table 1 outlines the different planes of ISO/IEC 10646 and their generic contents.

Table 1: Allocations for Planes in ISO/IEC 10646
Range of Code Positions (Hex) Plane # Name of Plane
00000000 ... 0000FFFF Plane 0 Basic Multilingual Plane - BMP; envisioned for encoding all contemporary scripts and symbols including most frequently used ideographs.
00010000 ... 0001FFFF Plane 1 Supplementary Multilingual Plane for scripts and symbols - SMP; envisioned for encoding future non-Ideographic and non-Unified Ideographic scripts and symbols.
00020000 ... 0002FFFF Plane 2 Supplementary Ideographic Plane - SIP; envisioned for encoding additional repertoire of Unified CJK ideographs or Compatibility CJK ideographs. Other CJK related characters, including strokes, radicals, and punctuation are encoded on the BMP.
00030000 ... 0003FFFF Plane 3 Tertiary Ideographic Plane - TIP; envisioned for encoding additional repertoire of ideographic characters that need more space than available in planes 0 or 2.
00040000 ... 0004FFFF to
000D0000 ... 000DFFFF
Plane 4 to
Plane 13
Reserved for Future Allocations.
000E0000 ... 000EFFFF Plane 14 (0E) Supplementary Special-purpose Plane - SSP; envisioned for encoding special characters such as alphabet used for language tagging.
000F0000 ... 000FFFFF Plane 15 (0F) Reserved for Private Use.
00100000 ... 0010FFFF Plane 16 (10) Reserved for Private Use.

The roadmap layouts are maintained by an adhoc group on Roadmaps. This group's latest working document is located at Roadmaps to Unicode. Snapshots from these layouts are submitted for WG2 acceptance for the continued work on ISO/IEC 10646 and is closely coordinated with the work on the Unicode Standard in liaison with the Unicode Consortium. Please note that there may be some minor differences between the current roadmaps at the Unicode site and the snapshot document in terms of highlighting and some hyperlinks to documents or code tables.

The latest snapshot of the roadmaps for the BMP, SMP, SIP, TIP and SSP, can be found at:

http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n4617.pdf. (also n4617.htm )

Please note that this snapshot consolidates information for each of the planes 0, 1, 2, 3 and 14 in a single document. All the scripts and individual characters included in ISO/IEC 10646:2014 (fourth edition) (the equivalent of repertoire of Unicode 7.0), additions in the Amendments 1 and 2 to ISO/IEC 10646:2014 (fourth edition), and all script additions currently foreseen to be reasonable candidates for future encoding are reflected.

The above roadmaps indicate that these four planes should suffice for all future encoding of characters having world-wide utility. In addition,

Note that ten more supplementary planes (4 to 13) are available for encoding. Also, in addition to the Private Use Area (PUA) in the BMP, 2 entire planes (15 and 16) are reserved for private use.

The layouts show the different scripts in various stages of progression - 'published', 'accepted' but not yet published, 'under evaluation' in Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) or in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2, 'exploratory' having some preliminary documentation, or 'open' with no initial proposal documents.