The Unicode Consortium has announced the acceptance of 38 emoji characters including ‘Nauseated face’, ‘selfie’, and ‘pregnant women’ as candidates for the upcoming Unicode 9.0 which is scheduled for release in mid-2016.
According to the Consortium, it has accepted the set of 38 emoji characters for a variety of reasons including compatibility, high frequency of usage and few on popular requests. Citing the ‘face with cowboy hat’ emoji, it revealed that the character was accepted for compatibility with the emoji used in Yahoo Messenger.
Some have also been accepted to fill gaps in the existing set of Unicode emoji, as by completing a gender pair.
There are few other prospective emoji characters that are under assessment and can be approved in future, the Consortium added.
The Consortium suggested that none of these 38 emoji characters have been finalised yet and chances are that some of them may be removed and others may be added as new candidates before Unicode 9.0 is released. The Consortium also said that names, images, and code points may also change.
At this point, almost all of the 38 emojis are in draft black and white versions. Once they have been finalised, vendors that support emoji will provide colorful and better-designed displays for each of these. For example, the emoji for shrug might appear as shown on the right.
