How to Submit Proposal Documents
To submit proposals to CLDR-TC for bug fixes, new data, or new structures, see Filing
Bug Reports. To propose new emoji characters, follow the instructions in Submitting Emoji Character Proposals.
For information about preparing other repertoire additions, see
Submitting Character Proposals.
To submit any technical proposal for consideration by the
UTC, please
follow the instructions below.
Because of the heavy workload of the UTC and the very limited time available during UTC meetings, most proposal documents must be pre-screened and reviewed by specialized groups of experts prior to their placement on the UTC agenda for discussion and decision. This requirement means that proposals should be submitted well in advance of the particular UTC meeting you are aiming at.
In particular, proposals for the addition of characters (other than emoji) or for entire scripts are first reviewed by the
Script Ad Hoc Group, prior to their being posted into the public UTC document register. Therefore, such proposals should be submitted
at least two months prior to a UTC meeting. Even so, such documents may require more time for initial review before being publicly posted, and authors may need to plan on an extended period of back-and-forth communication, including possible revisions to their proposal document. Decisions on such documents may be deferred to subsequent meetings of the UTC.
The deadline for document submissions which do not require pre-screening or further review is
seven days before the start of the meeting at which they are to be considered.
When submitting documents via e-mail, fill in the message fields as
follows:
To.
Send proposals to
docsubmit@unicode.org
to request that the document be added to the agenda. If you
include other addresses in the To field, please move
docsubmit@unicode.org to
the BCC field to avoid clogging mailboxes.(Note:
please do not include
docsubmit@unicode.org in technical discussions or CC with
non-document e-mail; it is an address only for document
submission, not discussion. Do not submit emoji proposals to this
address.)
Subject.
Make sure you have the
following format for the subject line, to assist us in processing
your document:
UTC
Doc:
<name of your topic>
Please make your topic as specific as possible so that
your submission can be directed appropriately. For example, if you
are proposing an emoji for encoding, be sure to include the specific
name of the emoji in your Subject line.
Body.
As the first line, include a
request such as Please consider the attached document for submission to the UTC.
If
you have questions that are not answered here, please ask
docsubmit@unicode.org. We will be
happy to assist with problems in document preparation or submission.
This address is not for emoji proposal submissions; see
Guidelines for Submitting Unicode® Emoji Proposals for further
information. Emoji proposals sent to
docsubmit@unicode.org
will not receive a response.
We endeavour to acknowledge receipt of all proposals in a
timely manner. If you do not receive e-mail within five business
days, please check your spam folder and whitelist, and feel free
to send a follow-up inquiry.
On the first page, a document must clearly identify the
author or submitter, the subject, and the date of submission. The
UTC receives 100 or more documents per meeting, so it is essential
to clearly identify each one. Please always include page numbers and
headers or footers if your document is more than one page long.
Documents may be submitted in PDF or HTML format.
The preferred document format is PDF. Microsoft Word (.doc,
.rtf, and .odt) files are also acceptable for submissions, if no special fonts are required,
and we can convert them to PDF.
Please avoid sending
plain text, unless for very brief documents, since we usually have to spend time formatting it. Your consideration in
submitting final form documents makes our job easier and less
error-prone. If you choose to submit plain text via e-mail, please
include the author or submitter, the subject, and the date within
the body of your message so that we don't have to infer that
information from the e-mail headers, or request such information
later.
It is inconvenient for us to receive
HTML files with
associated images via e-mail, unless they are Zipped or packaged as
attachments, not inline HTML or MIME rich text. In-line HTML
"blobs" are
difficult to extract reliably with proper encodings, especially with accompanying images.
To submit an HTML file with images, please package as a ZIP file or
Unix TAR archive so that all images are intact, or convert to a single
PDF file. If you need special consideration in submitting HTML with
images because you cannot make an archive, please discuss with us
beforehand and we may be able to assist you.
Notes on document layout: Documents are rarely
printed for the UTC meetings. Most attendees view the electronic
documents directly on-screen. Both A4 and 8.5×11 are used by
members. Please set up your document margins, especially headers and
footers, to be suitable for printing on both sizes of paper.
If your document is very
large, over 6 megabytes or so, it is most convenient if you put it
on the web and send us a URL. (The mail server may
refuse mail that is over 9 megabytes.)
Font embedding is required: Please embed all of your fonts when you create PDF files for submission.
(However, see the section
below on
IP infringement.) This is extremely important! It is not possible for us to find,
download, buy, or use non-standard fonts. You
can
only assume that "standard" PDF fonts are available to us. If you use
anything else it must be embedded. We cannot post documents that require
fonts which are not embedded, or which otherwise cannot be properly
viewed by committee members. If we find font problems, we will let you
know, and request that you re-submit with embedded fonts. Please do
not send us special fonts for printing your document.
Please do not protect your PDF files with passwords,
or otherwise inhibit our ability to view, print, amend, or add "free text" to the document.
(We use the Acrobat "text box" tool to add a little box with the document
number on the first page.)
Number templates: It is usually not helpful for PDF documents to contain a number
template such as L2/yy-nnn since we will often just cover over it. For
HTML documents, it is helpful to have such a template in the
upper right corner, since that saves us having to make adjustments to
your
formatting when attaching the document number. If you submit HTML,
please avoid too-large font sizes. Body text should be 10 points, or
12 points at the largest; headings over 14 points are not necessary.
Rules of Thumb for Document Submission
- Don't forget author, title, date, headers/footers, and page numbers.
- You may send us a URL from which we can fetch your document. This is often very convenient.
- If your document is less than 6 megabytes in size you may submit via e-mail.
- If you submit a multi-file document, such as HTML with images, you must send a URL pointer to the document on the web, or make an archive and send it.
- If your document is over 6 megabytes or includes multiple files (such as HTML with images) and you are not able to make an archive, then you must not submit via e-mail, but must send the URL of the document on the web, or make special arrangements with us to upload it.
Once a document is received and accepted for posting to the
registry, we will assign a document number to
it and tell you the
number for future reference. We usually update the document registry
when several new documents have accumulated in our queue, so your
document may not be posted immediately after acceptance.
The Unicode Consortium reserves the right to unilaterally reject documents for posting to the document register.
Document submissions are subject to
The Unicode® Consortium
Intellectual Property, Licensing & Technical Contribution Policies.
Private information, such as email addresses, collected during document submission is limited to the scope of the document transmission process, and is not reused or redistributed for future marketing or promotional contacts.
Please see Unicode Privacy Policy
for details.
![[Unicode]](https://www.unicode.org/webscripts/logo60s2.gif){kind=small}
