Ideographic Description Characters

Ideographic Description Characters is a Unicode block containing graphic characters used for describing CJK ideographs. They are used in Ideographic Description Sequences (IDS) to provide a description of an ideograph, in terms of what other ideographs make it up and how they are laid out relative to one another.IDS are described in chapter 18.2 of the Unicode Standard 9.0 on pages 689 through 692. An IDS provides the reader with a description of an ideograph that cannot be represented properly, usually because it is not encoded in Unicode; rendering systems are not intended to automatically compose the pieces into a complete ideograph, and the descriptions are not standardized.

U+2FF0 to U+2FFB were introduced from GBK; U+2FFC to U+2FFF were devised later and introduced in Unicode 15.1 (2023).

Block

Ideographic Description Sequences Ideographic Description Sequences are sequences of characters that represent a Chinese character structure as defined by the Unicode standard.

Below are the 16 characters as defined by Unicode in this block:

Unicode Symbol Meaning Example 1 IDS Example 2 IDS U+2FF0 ⿰ Two components combined left to right 相 ⿰木目𠁢 ⿰丨㇍ U+2FF1 ⿱ Two components combined above to below 杏 ⿱木口𠚤 ⿱𠂊丶 U+2FF2 ⿲ Three components combined left to middle and right 衍 ⿲彳氵亍𠂗 ⿲丿夕乚 U+2FF3 ⿳ Three components combined above to middle and below 京 ⿳亠口小𠋑 ⿳亼目口 U+2FF4 ⿴ One component fully wrapping another component 回 ⿴囗口𠀬 ⿴㐁人 U+2FF5 ⿵ One component surround three sides of another component (opening at bottom) 凰 ⿵几皇𧓉 ⿵齊虫 U+2FF6 ⿶ One component surround three sides of another component (opening at top) 凶 ⿶凵㐅义 ⿶乂丶 U+2FF7 ⿷ One component surround three sides of another component (opening at right) 匠 ⿷匚斤𧆬 ⿷虎九 U+2FF8 ⿸ One component surround top and left side of another component 病 ⿸疒丙𤆯 ⿸耂火 U+2FF9 ⿹ One component surround top and right side of another component 戒 ⿹戈廾𢧌 ⿹或壬 U+2FFA ⿺ One component surround bottom and left side of another component 超 ⿺走召𥘶 ⿺礼分 U+2FFB ⿻ Two components overlapped 巫 ⿻工从𣏃 ⿻木⿻コ一 U+2FFC ⿼ One component surround three sides of another component (opening at left) 㕚 ⿼叉丶𬺹 ⿼コ二 U+2FFD ⿽ One component surround bottom and right side of another component 氷 ⿽水丶斗 ⿽十⺀ U+2FFE ⿾ Horizontal reflection 卐 ⿾卍𣥄 ⿾正 U+2FFF ⿿ Rotation 𠕄 ⿿凹𠄔 ⿿予

Two other related ideographic description characters are not encoded in this Unicode block, but of which may be used in ideographic description sequences: Unicode Symbol Block Meaning Example 1 IDS Example 2 IDSU+303E 〾 CJK Symbols and Punctuation Variant but not equivalent 㬵 (U+3B35) 〾胶 (U+80F6) 𫜵〾爫U+31EF ㇯ CJK Strokes Subtraction 乒㇯兵丶𧰨㇯豕一

There is also the character "⬚", encoded as U+2B1A. Although its name is simply "dotted square", it is frequently used alongside ideographic characters to denote indivisible, complete units.

History The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Ideographic Description Characters block:

Version Count UTC ID L2 ID WG2 ID IRG ID Document 3.0 U+2FF0..2FFB 12 N1284 doc) N1348 N1357 N1353 N1494 N1430 N365 N1453 N1486 N437 N1489 N1490 N436 doc) doc) N453 N1680 N1782 N1842 N1703 doc) html, doc) N1971 doc) N2023 N2003 N2067 N2123 N2124 N2103 N2480 N2534 N955 15.1 U+2FFC..2FFF 4 N2273R N2492 N2572

See also Chinese character description languages Specials (Unicode block)

References

Ideographic Description Characters

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