Home » Oracc Cuneiform Fonts » Unicode Features » Oracc PUA

Oracc uses the Plane 15 PUA from F0000-FFFFD as a space to create signs pending possible encoding, and to maintain variant forms of signs that do not merit separate encoding. All management of the Oracc PUA is consolidated in the OSL project.

The region from F0000-F0FFF is used for core Oracc additions; the region from F1000 are used for font-specific additions.

Retention Policy

Characters are added to the Oracc PUA from F0000-F0FFF are considered permanent and are never removed. If a PUA character is subsequently encoded the OSL is updated to reflect the encoded character but the version in the PUA is left as it is.

Characters from F1000 upwards should be considered impermanent and are used for font development where a period of refinement may make it convenient to maintain a number of characters pending resolution of their fate.

Definitional Data Table

A running account of the PUA usage is kept in oracc-pua.tab [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/oracc/osl/refs/heads/master/00etc/oracc-pua.tab].

The data format for this table is:

OID        SIGN-NAME      PUA-CODE      SCRIPT     ORACC-PUA-BLOCK	NOTES

OID

An OID must be assigned in Oracc's OID table for any character that is being added to the Oracc PUA.

SIGN-NAME

The primary OSL name for the sign

PUA-CODE

The uppercase hex codepoint in Plane 15.

SCRIPT

One of the script codes Xsux, Pcun, Pelm.

ORACC-PUA-BLOCK

An indicator of groups of characters added to the Oracc PUA; by convention these are numbered 9.x.

NOTES

Provides various information on the source of characters and possible implementations/future resolutions of their status. The notation NAME.eNN in this column means that the sign can be treated as IVS E0100+NN of the character NAME.

More on the Notes Column

In Oracc PUA 9.5 the following abbreviations are used (some of these should be generalized to other parts of the Oracc PUA):

ACN

"Archaic Cuneiform Numerals [Encode]"--the character could be encoded in a future ACN additions proposal.

ADD

"Additional"--a neutral designation indicating only that the character is not in ACN. Characters above U+F0000 are not in AP23 either.

DNE

"Do Not Encode"--the character is not encodable.

OOR

"Out Of Range"--an assertion that the character is anomalous and should not be encoded.

Pelm

Proto-Elamite--the character should be encoded in the Proto-Elamite proposal.

PCE

"Proto-Cuneiform Encode"--the character should be encoded in the PC proposal.

Oracc PUA Blocks

Block 9.1

This block was created in September/October 2024 for number signs and variants that were not encoded at that point.

The OSL/signlist has a PUA 9.1 page [/osl/signlist/OraccPUA9.1/].

Block 9.2

This block was created in October 2024 for non-numerical signs and variants that were not encoded at that point.

The OSL/signlist has a PUA 9.2 page [/osl/signlist/OraccPUA9.2/].

Block 9.3

Created November 2024 for Variant Stacking Patterns in Pcun.

The OSL/signlist has a PUA 9.3 page [/osl/signlist/OraccPUA9.3/].

Block 9.4

Created November 2024 for unencodable Pcun numbers.

The OSL/signlist has a PUA 9.4 page [/osl/signlist/OraccPUA9.4/].

Block 9.5

Created November 2024 for possibly encodable Pcun numbers.

The OSL/signlist has a PUA 9.5 page [/osl/signlist/OraccPUA9.5/].