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I understand that there is a lot of "complexity" around Unicode. And some of it is explained and discussed visibly on the internet. For example, I have seen discussions about encodings, the basic concepts (code point, planes, general category), composition (diacritics and others) and bidirectional text.

But I am quite lost trying to find out ressources about the precise description of certain code points (i.e., what are they supposed to represent). It certainly cannot be the case that the name alone clarifies the meaning (I'm looking at you, 🌃-night with stars and ⻏-CJK Radical City).

I of course know that pinning down the meaning of anything is ... well ... an impossible task (meanings evolve, there is ambiguity, etc.). But it feels important to me to have some record of the what "things" the code point represents or is directly related to.

For example: code point U+270A corresponds to ✊ (Raised Fist). I can think of many reasons why we have this as a code point, but not "Raised left leg", "Raising both left while folding the knee 36 degrees". And something tells me that this should be said somewhere. (Clearly, exhaustive listings are also incredibly hard to make, but what about aiming for a incomplete list? I think that would be quite welcome.)

This information, where is it? Suggestions are appreciated!

naia

@jookia, thank you for the link! I did not know this database, and it does have many bits of information that I couldn't find elsewhere. I don't see there anything in the lines of "reasons this exists" or "things this code point is related to".

I can imagine that a description of context could be seen as "not a high priority" in the effort of building the Unicode standard. In a sense this is almost writing a dictionary (as in, assigning meanings related to each key) but for all alphabets, all ideograms, etc. quite the effort! But perhaps a necessary one?

In any case, this is bookmarked! Thank you 😀

@naia No problem! I'm actually in the slooow process of writing a Unicode guide to help teach people what they actually need to know.

Regarding context: Have you read the standard? It's free online in PDF form, you can buy it in book form and might answer questions as to why things are done a certain way:

unicode.org/versions/Unicode15

I *highly* recommend reading some of it. It's written in plain english and helpful.