e-SCRIPTA

8–9/2010

Proposal for a unified encodingof Early Cyrillic glyphs
in the Unicode Private Use Area
A proposal prepared on behalf of the Commission
for Computer Processing of Slavic Manuscripts and Early
Printed Books to the International Committee of Slavists

Victor Baranov
David J. Birnbaum
Ralph Cleminson
Heinz Miklas
Achim Rabus
Introduction
This paper proposes an encoding standard for certain early Cyrillic charactersand glyphs that, for different reasons, are not yet, are unlikely to be, or will never
be included in the Universal Character Set (UCS) of the Unicode Standard, but arenevertheless used by parts of the paleoslavistic community. In order to renderthese units in a standard-conformant way, there are three options 1 :1. Change fonts
2. Use the Unicode Private Use Area (PUA)
3. Make use of OpenType technology
In the current paper, the authors concentrate on option 2. We propose “a sortof microstandardization of a portion of the PUA”1. The starting point for this project is the inventory of early Cyrillic originally proposed at the conference held in
Belgrade on 15–17 October 2007, and published as part of its proceedings 2 . While
1
2

Birnbaum, Cleminson, Kempgen, Ribarov 2008: 177.
Standardizacija 2009: 24–243.

V. Baranov, D. J. Birnbaum, R. Cleminson, H. Miklas, A. Rabus
as a proposal to expand the UCS this was widely considered unrealistic, a compromise reached during discussions among interested parties during the Fourteenth International Congress of Slavists in Ohrid, 10–16 September 2008, proposed placing
the additional units at agreed codepoints within the PUA, on the model of what
had already been done for such elements used in medieval Latin-script texts by the
Medieval Unicode Font Initiative (MUFI). The advantage of this is that it complies
with the standard while at the same time giving medievalists the possibility of rendering texts exactly as they wish and maintaining compatibility with one another’swork.

Recent history
In recent years there have been lively discussions regarding the appropriate
way to encode early Cyrillic writing. Some scholars in the field, including some of
the authors of the current paper, follow a “maximalist” approach: they wish to reproduce the graphemic peculiarities of early Cyrillic texts as faithfully as possible.
In doing so, they need to use graphemic entities that are not encoded in the Unicode
standard. However, as was stated 3 , because of the Unicode Consortium’s encoding
policy many of the units proposed in the Belgrade Standard cited above are not candidates for inclusion in the Unicode standard. In view of this situation, the colleagues
adhering to the “maximalist” approach proposed encoding all the needed units –for systematic reasons including also the ones already present in the UCS–separately, although they were aware that creating such a parallel encoding strategy alongside the Unicode standard would be fraught with problems.
Other scholars, including some of the authors of the current paper, prefer a“minimalist” approach, i.e., they adhere strictly to the Unicode standard, use markup to represent details that cannot be encoded at the character level, and refrainfrom reproducing graphemic peculiarities in great detail. However, the impossibility of precisely rendering all graphemic peculiarities of a text is a serious disadvantage of the “minimalist” approach. The fundamental problem is that “there isno universal set of fundamental units of text. Instead, the division of text into text
elements necessarily varies by language and text process 4 .” In the present case,the minimalist approach favors the text processes of searching and sorting, so that
letter forms that represent the same linguistic unit will be encoded similarly. 5 The
maximalist approach favors the text process of rendering, ensuring that letter forms
that look different in original sources will be encoded differently, and therefore
can easily be rendered differently.
3

Birnbaum, Cleminson, Kempgen, Ribarov 2008
US 5.2.0, Chapter 2.
5
For an earlier attempt to reconcile the inherent conflicts among text processes within
the Unicode framework, see (Birnbaum, Cournane, Flynn 1999).
4

10

Proposal for a unified encoding of Early Cyrillic glyphs
in the Unicode Private Use Area
The authors of the current paper seek to reconcile the “maximalist” and “minimalist” positions. They recommend a general convention, or micro-standard, forthose glyphs that are needed for specific texts, but will not find their way into the
UCS. The proposed micro-standard is meant to expand, not to replace the Unicode
standard. An easy, practical and convenient way to achieve the aim of a micro-standard of early Cyrillic writing is to coordinate the use of a portion of the Unicode
Private Use Area (PUA) for the purpose of encoding glyphic variants of early Cyrillic characters on a character level.

Why do we need early Cyrillic PUA microstandardization?
There are three recommended options for Slavic medievalists who need todeal with letter forms that are not included in the inventory of Unicode 6 :1. Change fonts. Use a set of fonts that are all Unicode-encoded but containdifferently shaped glyphs. This option can be useful in some cases in order to represent the writing of each “time and place in a culturally acceptable manner”5. The
font solution, however, uses a presentational technology (font) for informational
purposes, and therefore puts all users of the document at risk of losing information
should they not have access to the original fonts, since other sets of fonts may
have differently shaped glyphs. Furthermore, choosing the font solution meansthat one can neither add any characters missing from the Unicode inventory nor
achieve independence from fonts and, thus, extensive compatibility. One will most
likely run into problems if one tries to exchange one’s data with other users who
may not have access to the same project-specific fonts.
2. Use the Unicode Private Use Area. If the paleoslavistic community is able
to reach an agreement about where in the PUA to place the required units that are
not present in the Unicode standard, thus establishing a sort of microstandardization, scholars can adhere to standards, ensuring sustainability and compatibility of
their texts and, at the same time, render texts as exactly as they wish.
3. Use OpenType technology. OpenType is a technology that allows multiple
glyphs to be assigned to one code point. It also provides graceful support for ligatures (explicitly excluded from Unicode). Some promising possibilities of OpenType have been demonstrated by Kempgen and Rabus 7 . However, for the time
being there are few applications supporting OpenType features, which means that
OpenType technology cannot currently be considered a viable alternative 8 .
6Birnbaum, Cleminson, Kempgen, Ribarov 2008: 177
Kempgen 2008; Rabus 2010.
8
Adobe InDesign, a mid-level end publishing and layout application used primarily
by professional publishers, provides excellent support for OpenType, but most Slavists
work entirely within word processors and other applications that are designed to support
7

11

V. Baranov, D. J. Birnbaum, R. Cleminson, H. Miklas, A. Rabus
Thus, the most promising of the options seems to be solution 2, i.e., to use theUnicode Private Use Area (PUA). At the moment, the use of the PUA provides the
only convenient and technically feasible compromise between the “maximalist” and“minimalist” positions.

Coordination with MUFIThe present paper is not the first proposal by medievalists to create in the
PUA a sort of micro-standardization of units not included in the Basic Multilingual Plane of the Unicode Character Set. For medieval characters and glyphs of
the Latin script, the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative (MUFI) elaborated a PUAstandardization known as the MUFI character recommendation 9 .
The authors of the present paper seek to enable scholars to use Latin and Cyrillic PUA characters at the same time. Hence, the proposed Cyrillic charactersand glyphs have been assigned to code points of the PUA that are not occupied by
MUFI characters. Medievalists working on Latin and Cyrillic texts in parallel
should thus not run into encoding problems, provided they adhere to both the MUFI
character recommendation and the new Cyrillic additions. For the latter we will
use the abbreviation CYFI.
According to Stötzner 10 , one relatively large PUA block not occupied by MUFI
characters is F330–F3FF. Additionally, the block EF60–EF8F is completely unused. We propose that these blocks be used for the Early Cyrillic characters andglyphs described in the present paper.

Principles for inclusion of characters/glyphs
It goes without saying that PUA characters and glyphs should not replace proper Unicode characters; rather they should be used exclusively as additions tothose characters. As our colleagues from MUFI rightly state: “Characters in the
Private Use Area (PUA) should be used with great caution. [...] For documentswith a long life expectancy, it is strongly recommended that PUA characters should
be encoded with mark-up or entities, and that PUA characters should be used forthe final display only, whether on screen or in print. For documents with a shortlife expectancy, characters may be used with less caution, as long as future problems of storage and interchangeability are considered.” 11composition, rather than layout. The latest version of Microsoft Word for Windows (2010)provides limited support for OpenType features such as ligatures or style sets. Of current
technologies, OpenType is The Correct Solution to the problem we are addressing, but thelack of support for it in the mainstream applications used by most paleoslavists means thatan alternative approach is required, at least in the interim.
9
See http://www.hit.uib.no/mufi/.
10
Stötzner 200911
MUFI character recommendation 200912

Proposal for a unified encoding of Early Cyrillic glyphs
in the Unicode Private Use Area
Due to this issue, the authors of the present paper resolved to include only as
many units as absolutely required. This is reflected in the principles for inclusionof characters and glyphs.
The following symbols have been included:
1. Functional characters such as CYRILLIC LETTER BROAD ES (capital,
small and combining characters)
2. Mirrored characters such as CYRILLIC LETTER REVERSED A
3. Composite characters that can be rendered as sequence of a Unicode character and a diacritic Unicode sign, such as CYRILLIC LETTER PALATAL
GHE (capital, small and combining characters). The reason for includingthese characters is to guarantee correct typographic placement
4. Composite characters that can be rendered as a sequence of two Unicodecharacters, such as CYRILLIC LETTER YERU WITH BACK YER AND
IOTA 12 . These digraphic units are mainly needed for transliteration(Cyrillic-Glagolitic) and sorting purposes
5. Superscript characters not (yet) present in the Base Multilingual Plane(BMP, code points between U+0000 and U+FFFF) of the UCS. There aresome superscript characters currently considered for inclusion to the
BMP 13 . Due to the fact that it is not yet known if and when all super-script
characters will be included in the BMP, they have temporarily been included in the proposal at hand, although we recommend that their use be
de-precated should they be included in a subsequent revision of the Unicode standard. Examples include COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER
HARD SIGN
6. Modifier characters such as COMBINING CYRILLIC INVERTED TITLO.
7. Punctuation marks such as REVERSED THREE DOT PUNCTUATION
The following symbols have not been included in the present proposal:
8. Glyph variants, the reproduction of which is of limited interest to paleoslavists
9. Ligatures that represent combinations of sounds
10. Combining (superscript) characters consisting of a sequence of two characters in vertical order12

The name YERU (for YERY) is plainly erroneous, but the ISO standardization
process requires that, in the interest of easing migration, established character names, evenif plainly erroneous, not be changed. However odd the word “yeru” may look to a Slavist,
what is important for the migration of legacy documents from earlier to later standards isthe ability to map unambiguously from what used to be called “yeru,” a process facilitatedby perpetuating the otherwise unfortunate name in the newer standards.
13
Everson, Baranov, Miklas, Rabus 201013

V. Baranov, D. J. Birnbaum, R. Cleminson, H. Miklas, A. Rabus

Correction signs
Correction signs are presently lacking in Unicode. They can be used for transcriptions of illegible characters or symbols that for various reasons have not beenpreserved in the originals (see Modifier Characters). So far these symbols have been
encoded variously in critical and diplomatic editions, cf., e.g., the New Testament
editorial symbols (2E00–2E0D) and the Ancient Greek textual symbols (2E0E–2E16).

Explanations
The units needed for the electronic rendering of Old Slavonic texts can be divided into three groups:(1) main units and their combinations, needed for a simplified rendering inplain text, that is, without markup,(2) functional variants and their combinations, needed for the exact graphemic
reproduction of documents,(3) paleographic variants (glyphs) and their combinations, needed for a formally exact reproduction of manuscripts and early printed material.
Clearly this division is to be taken cum grano salis, as it depends on the exact
spatiotemporal, sometimes even individual, use of the given unit. Therefore, eachchoice and attachment of a unit to a certain group would have to be explained separately (for the gross differentiation of functional units 14 . Presently, Unicode 5.2
contains all units of the group (1) and some units of the group (2).
Since the number of free code points in MUFI is limited, here we propose toinclude only symbols (characters, superscript characters) with a specific function
and coordinate their location in PUA with MUFI. This set we will call PUA1. In
the future a second set PUA2 will be proposed for a number of glyphs (ligatures,
paleographic variants) that may not be coordinated with MUFI and would therefore be intended for Slavistic projects that will not also require support for MUFI encoding.
Thus, the present choice foresees:
1. to include in PUA1 character symbols of group (2), including:a. variants of symbols in the Unicode standard:i). mirror variants, e.g. CYRILLIC LETTER REVERSED A,
ii). palatal and soft variants, e.g. CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTERSOFT EN,5
14

Baranov, Romanenko 200914

Proposal for a unified encoding of Early Cyrillic glyphs
in the Unicode Private Use Areaiii). superscript letters, e.g. COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER BROAD
IE, in this section also:– superscript variants of modern character forms that are needed forthe transliteration of old texts with modern means, e.g. COMBININGCYRILLIC LETTER KJE,
– superscript characters with diacritic, for which the standard foresees
combinations, e.g. COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER YI;
b. to include character symbols needed for the exact transliteration of Glagolitic texts, comprising also superscript letters such as COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER IOTA;
2. to include into PUA1 symbols of the group (3) that differ notably from theexisting variants in Unicode, e.g. CYRILLIC LETTER REVERSED REARRANGED UK;
3. to include in PUA1 modifying symbols (titlo, paerok, diacritics such as
accents or spiritus), e.g. COMBINING CYRILLIC INVERTED TITLO, punctuation signs, e.g., SLAVONIC KOPYE;
4. to include in PUA1 correction signs;
5. to refrain from including in PUA1
a. symbols of the group (3) with the exception of those mentioned above,
which are to be included into PUA2;
b. combinations, with the exception of those mentioned above, i.e.,
combinations of characters with titlo or diacritics, ligatures and characters
denoting numbers. They will be included in PUA2;c. certain theoretically possible symbols that are of limited interest to
paleoslavists, e.g. CYRILLIC LETTER SOFT ER;
6. to refrain from leaving spare code numbers after every group to be used for
new symbols of the given group.
7. to refrain from leaving spare code numbers after every group to be used for
new symbols of the given group.
It is hoped that the proposed PUA encoding for Early Cyrillic Symbols will
establish itself as a sort of micro-standardization. Designers of scholarly fonts areencouraged to include characters and glyphs according to our proposal (see code
points in appendix).

15

V. Baranov, D. J. Birnbaum, R. Cleminson, H. Miklas, A. Rabus
REFERENCES
Baranov, Romanenko 2009: Баранов, В. А., Романенко В.А., Опыт разработки,создания и использования кирилловского алфавита для полнотекстовыхбаз данных и интернет-изданий древнерусских рукописей XI–XIV веков. // Јовановић Г., Грковић-Мејџор Ј., Костић З., Савић В. (уред.) Стандардизација старословенског ћириличког писма и његова регистрација уУникоду. Београд, 2009 (= САНУ, Научни скупови, Књ. CXXV; Одељење
језика и књижевности, књ. 20), 49–62.
Birnbaum, Cournane, Flynn 1999: Birnbaum D. J., Cournane M., Flynn P., Using
the TEI Writing System Declaration (WSD). // Computers and the Humanities,
1999, 33/1–2 (April), 49–57.
Birnbaum, Cleminson, Kempgen, Ribarov 2008: Birnbaum D. J., Cleminson R.,
Kempgen S., Ribarov K., Character Set Standardization for Early Cyrillic Writing after Unicode 5.1 (A White Paper prepared on behalf of the Commission
for Computer Processing of Slavic Manuscripts and Early Printed Books to theInternational Committee of Slavists). // Scripta & e-Scripta 6, 2008, 161–193.
BP: Belgrade Proposal – Стандард старословенског ћириличког писма / коначни предлог. Миклас Х., Баранов В. А., Костић З., Савић В. (аутори). – Света Гора Атонска, Манастир Хиландар (= Monastery Hilandar), 2008 Београд, ИЦА, 24 стр. – ISBN 978-86-84747-30-5.
Everson, Baranov, Miklas, Rabus 2010: Everson M., Baranov V., Miklas H., Rabus A., Proposal to encode nine Cyrillic characters for Slavonic:
http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3748.pdf
IRSofOCS: Kostić Z., Internal registration of the Standard of OCS (Belgrade Model) in Unicode PrivateUseArea (PUA). Belgrade, 2008, 93 pp.
Kempgen 2008: Kempgen S., Unicode 5.1, Old Church Slavonic, Remaining Problems – and Solutions, including OpenType Features. // Miklas H., Miltenova
A. (eds.), Slovo: Towards a Digital Library of South Slavic Manuscripts. Proceedings of the International Conference, 21–26 February 2008, Sofia, Bulgaria. Sofia 2008, 200–219. Online version:
http://kodeks.uni-bamberg.de/slavling/downloads/SK_Unicode_5.1_OCS_OTF.pdf

MUFI character recommendation 2009: MUFI character recommendation. Characters in the official Unicode Standard and in the Private Use Area for Medieval texts written in the Latin alphabet. Version 3.0 of 5 July 2009.
http://www.mufi.info/specs/MUFI-Alphabetic-3-0.pdf
Rabus 2010: Rabus A., Unicode and OpenType – a practical approach to producing Church Slavonic scientific editions. // Баранов В. А. (отв. ред.), Письменное наследие и современные информационные технологии: сборник статей лекторов междунар. науч. школы для молодежи (Ижевск, 12–15 октября 2009 г.) Ижевск, 2010 (in press).

16

Proposal for a unified encoding of Early Cyrillic glyphs
in the Unicode Private Use Area
Standardizacija 2009: Јовановић Г., Грковић-Мејџор Ј., Костић З., Савић В.,(уред.), Стандардизација старословенског ћириличког писма и његова
регистрација у Уникоду. Београд, 2009 (= САНУ, Научни скупови, Књ.
CXXV; Одељење језика и књижевности, књ. 20).
Stötzner 2009: Stötzner A., A Private Use Area Survey. A comparative study of thePrivat [!] Use Area of the Unicode Standard as used by fonts and projects inthe fields of Indo-European linguistics. Part One: Detailed Version.
http://www.signographie.de/cms/upload/PUA%20_%20SIAS/SIAS_PUA_
survey_in_detail.pdf
US 5.2: The Unicode Standard, Version 5.2. Ranges: 0400–04FF, 2DE0–2DFF,
A640–A69F (URL: http://unicode.org).

Appendix
Structure of tables
1 – Character name
2 – Indication: Upper-Case Character (UC), Lower-Case Character (LC), Superscript Character (SC), Upper-Case Ligature Characters (ULC), Lower-Case Ligature Characters (LLC), Superscript Ligature Characters (SLC)
3 – New Character code point in PUA
4 – Glyph
5 – Code of the Belgrade Proposal
6 – Code of the Internal registration of the Standard of OCS
Number of units in the Private Use Area 1
Upper-Case Characters (UC) – 38.
Lower-Case Characters (LC) – 35.
Superscript Characters (SL) – 88.
Modifier Characters (MC) – 9.
Punctuation Сharacters (PC) – 7.
In total – 177 characters.

17

V. Baranov, D. J. Birnbaum, R. Cleminson, H. Miklas, A. Rabus

TablesCharacters
1

2

3

4

5

6

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER REVERSED A

UC

F330



-

-

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER REVERSED A

LC

F331



-

-

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER REVERSED A

SC

F332



-

-

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER PALATAL GHE

UC

F333



5

1009

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER PALATAL GHE

LC

F334



5

1019

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER PALATAL GHE

SC

F335



5

1011

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER GIE

SC

F336



-

-

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER SOFT DE

SC

F337



7

1108

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER IO

SC

F338



-

-

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER UKRAINIAN IE

SC

F339



9

1198

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON

UC

F33A



-

1129

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER EPSILON

LC

F33B



-

1162

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER EPSILON

SC

F33C



-

1137

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER E

SC

F33D



10

1237

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER DZELO

SC

F33E



12

1323

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER DZE

SC

F33F



13

1360

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER REVERSED
DZE

SC

F340



14

1394

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER ZEMLYA

SC

F341



16

1471

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER I

SC

F342



17

1514

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER SHORT I

SC

F343



-

-

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTERBYELORUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN I WITH DOT

SC

F344



-

-

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DECIMAL I

LC

F345



19

1614

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER DECIMAL I

SC

F346



19

1598

18

Proposal for a unified encoding of Early Cyrillic glyphs
in the Unicode Private Use Area
COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER YI

SC

F347



-

-

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER IOTA

SC

F348



22

1722

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER YE

SC

F349



-

-

UC

F34A



23

1754

LC

F34B



23

1773

SC

F34C



23

1761

SC

F34D



25

1835

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER PALATAL KA

UC

F34E



27

1915

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER PALATAL KA

LC

F34F



27

1930

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER PALATAL KA

SC

F350



27

1918

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER KJE

SC

F351



-

-

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER SOFT EL

SC

F352



29

1995

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER LJE

SC

F353



-

-

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER SOFT EM

SC

F354



31

2087

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SOFT EN

UC

F355



33

2150

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SOFT EN

LC

F356



33

2165

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER SOFT EN

SC

F357



33

2153

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER NJE

SC

F358



-

-

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BROAD O

UC

F359



35

2215

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BROAD O

LC

F35A



35

2236

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER BROAD O

SC

F35B



35

2224

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER MONOCULAR
O

SC

F35C



36

2267

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER BINOCULAR O

SC

F35D



37

2305

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER DOUBLE
MONOCULAR O

SC

F35E



38

2340

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER KOPPA

SC

F35F



-

-

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BROAD ES

UC

F360



43

2530

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BROAD ES

LC

F361



43

2547

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER DJERV WITHOUTSTROKECYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DJERV WITHOUTSTROKECOMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER DJERVWITHOUT STROKECOMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER MODERN
DJERV

19

V. Baranov, D. J. Birnbaum, R. Cleminson, H. Miklas, A. Rabus
COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER BROAD ES

SC

F362



43

2535

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER TSHE

SC

F363



-

-

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER U

SC

F364



48

2811

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER SHORT U

SC

F365



-

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER STRAIGHT U

SC

F366



-

-

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER STRAIGHT U
WITH STROKE

SC

F367



-

-

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER REVERSED U

UC

F368



-

-

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER REVERSED U

LC

F369



-

-

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER REVERSED U

SC

F36A



-

-

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER UK

SC

F36B



45

2650

ULC

F36C



-

-

LLC

F36D



-

-

SLC

F36E



-

-

ULC

F36F



-

-

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER REARRANGED UK

LLC

F370



-

-

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER REARRANGED
UK

SLC

F371



-

-

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER LIGATURE UK

ULC

F372



47

2749

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER LIGATURE UK

LLC

F373



47

2778

ULC

F374



-

LLC

F375



-

2724

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER INSCRIBED UK

ULC

F376



74

5062

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER INSCRIBED UK

LLC

F377



52

5339

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER EF

SC

F378



49

2844

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER PALATAL HA

UC

F379



51

2920

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER PALATAL HA

LC

F37A



51

2935

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER PALATAL HA

SC

F37B



51

2923

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER OMEGA

SC

F37C



52

2961

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER REVERSEDREARRANGED UKCYRILLIC SMALL LETTER REVERSEDREARRANGED UK
COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER REVERSEDREARRANGED UKCYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER REARRANGEDUKCYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER INVERTEDLIGATURE UK
CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER INVERTEDLIGATURE UK

20

Proposal for a unified encoding of Early Cyrillic glyphs
in the Unicode Private Use Area
COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER BROAD
OMEGA

SC

F37D



-

3005

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER CLOSED OMEGA

UC

F37E



54

3043

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER CLOSED OMEGA

LC

F37F



54

3061

SC

F380



54

3049

SC

F381



55

3082

SC

F382



59

3232

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER DZHE

SC

F383



62

3343

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SHTA

ULC

F384



64

3400

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHTA

ULC

F385



64

3420

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER SHTA

SLC

F386



64

3408

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER INVERTED SHTA

ULC

F387



64

3401

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER INVERTED SHTA

ULC

F388



64

3421

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER HARD SIGN

SC

F389



66

3486

SC

F38A



67

3532

UC

F38B



-

3527

LC

F38C



-

3553

SC

F38D



-

-

UC

F38E



69

3608

LC

F38F



69

3623

SC

F390



69

3611

UC

F391



70

3638

LC

F392



70

3653

SC

F393



70

3641

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER YERU

SC

F394



72

3708

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER LIGATED YERU

UC

F395



-

3703

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER LIGATED YERU

LC

F396



-

3721

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER CLOSEDOMEGACOMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER ROUNDOMEGACOMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER REVERSEDTSECOMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER YERU WITH
BACK YERCYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER LIGATED YERU
WITH BACK YER
CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER LIGATED YERU
WITH BACK YER
COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER LIGATEDYERU WITH BACK YER
CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YERU WITH
BACK YER AND IOTACYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YERU WITH BACKYER AND IOTACOMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER YERU WITH
BACK YER AND IOTACYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YERU WITH
BACK YER AND ICYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YERU WITH BACKYER AND ICOMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER YERU WITH
BACK YER AND I

21

V. Baranov, D. J. Birnbaum, R. Cleminson, H. Miklas, A. Rabus
COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER LIGATED
YERU

SC

F397



-

-

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YERU WITH IOTA

UC

F398



74

3769

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YERU WITH IOTA

LC

F399



74

3784

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER YERU WITH
IOTA

SC

F39A



74

3772

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YERU WITH I

UC

F39B



75

3799

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YERU WITH I

LC

F39C



75

3814

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER YERU WITH I

SC

F39D



75

3802

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER SOFT SIGN

SC

F39E



71

3671

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER NEUTRAL
YER

SC

F39F



76

3834

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER IOTIFIED YAT

SC

F3A0



78

3930

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER REVERSED YU

SC

F3A1



80

4004

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YUK

UC

F3A2



81

4035

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YUK

LC

F3A3



81

4050

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER YUK

SC

F3A4



81

4038

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SEMIIOTIFIED A

UC

F3A5



83

4103

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SEMIIOTIFIED A

LC

F3A6



83

4118

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER SEMIIOTIFIED A

SC

F3A7



83

4106

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER IOTIFIED E

SC

F3A8



84

4141

UC

F3A9



-

-

LC

F3AA



-

4159

SC

F3AB



-

4142

UC

F3AC



-

-

LC

F3AD



-

-

SC

F3AE



-

-

SC

F3AF



86

4232

UC

F3B0



87

4259

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER REVERSEDIOTIFIED E
CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER REVERSEDIOTIFIED E
COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER REVERSEDIOTIFIED E
CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER REARRANGEDIOTIFIED E
CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER REARRANGEDIOTIFIED E
COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER REARRANGEDIOTIFIED E
COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER CLOSEDLITTLE YUSCYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER CLOSED LITTLEYUS WITH VERTICAL STROKE

22

Proposal for a unified encoding of Early Cyrillic glyphs
in the Unicode Private Use AreaCYRILLIC SMALL LETTER CLOSED LITTLEYUS WITH VERTICAL STROKECOMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER CLOSEDLITTLE YUS WITH VERTICAL STROKECYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER LITTLE YUSWITH TRIANGULAR FOOTCYRILLIC SMALL LETTER LITTLE YUS WITHTRIANGULAR FOOTCOMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER LITTLE YUSWITH TRIANGULAR FOOTCYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER THREE-STROKELITTLE YUSCYRILLIC SMALL LETTER THREE-STROKELITTLE YUSCOMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER THREESTROKE LITTLE YUSCOMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER YACOMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER IOTIFIED
LITTLE YUSCOMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER IOTIFIED
CLOSED LITTLE YUSCYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IOTIFIED CLOSEDLITTLE YUS WITH VERTICAL STROKECYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IOTIFIED CLOSEDLITTLE YUS WITH VERTICAL STROKECOMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER IOTIFIED CLOSED LITTLE YUS WITH VERTICAL STROKECYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER HOLLOW BIGYUSCYRILLIC SMALL LETTER HOLLOW BIG YUSCOMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER HOLLOW BIGYUSCYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER CLOSEDHOLLOW BIG YUSCYRILLIC SMALL LETTER CLOSED HOLLOWBIG YUSCOMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER CLOSEDHOLLOW BIG YUSCOMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER BLENDED
YUS
COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER YNCYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER REVERSEDIOTIFIED BIG YUSCYRILLIC SMALL LETTER REVERSEDIOTIFIED BIG YUSCOMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER REVERSEDIOTIFIED BIG YUS

23

LC

F3B1



87

4274

SC

F3B2



87

4262

UC

F3B3



-

4186

LC

F3B4



-

4208

SC

F3B5



-

-

UC

F3B6



-

4188

LC

F3B7



-

4210

SC

F3B8



-

-

SC

F3B9



88

4292

SC

F3BA



92

4426

SC

F3BB



93

4460

UC

F3BC



94

4487

LC

F3BD



94

4502

SC

F3BE



94

4490

UC

F3BF



-

-

LC

F3C0



-

-

SC

F3C1



-

-

UC

F3C2



-

-

LC

F3C3



-

-

SC

F3C4



-

-

SC

F3C5



90

4360

SC

F3C6



91

4392

UC

F3C7



-

4518

LC

F3C8



-

4538

SC

F3C9



-

-

V. Baranov, D. J. Birnbaum, R. Cleminson, H. Miklas, A. Rabus
COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER KSI

SC

F3CA



96

4563

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER PSI

SC

F3CB



97

4608

CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IK

UC

F3CC



99

4679

CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IK

LC

F3CD



99

4695

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER IK

SC

F3CE



99

4683

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER IZHITSA

SC

F3CF



100

4718

COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER IZHITSA WITH
DOUBLE GRAVE AKCENT

SC

F3D0



-

-

2

3

4

5

6

COMBINING CYRILLIC INVERTED TITLO

MC

EF60



-

0436

COMBINING CYRILLIC ANGULAR TITLO

MC

EF61



-

0440

COMBINING CYRILLIC REVERSED PAYEROK

MC

EF62



4

0254

COMBINING INVERTED KREMASTY

MC

EF63



31

-

MC

EF64



32

-

Modifier Characters
1

COMBINING REVERSED KREMASTY
COMBINING CYRILLIC DOUBLE PSILIPNEUMATACOMBINING CYRILLIC DOUBLE DASIAPNEUMATA

MC

EF65



18

-

MC

EF66



25

-

DAMAGE SIGN

MC

EF67



-

-

LOST SIGN

MC

EF68



-

-

2

3

4

5

6

REVERSE TILDE

PC

EF70



-

0021

SLAVONIC KOPYE

PC

EF71



8

0033

MIDDLE COMMA

PC

EF72



2

-

REVERSED THREE DOT PUNCTUATION

PC

EF73



13

0040

LEFT MARGINALIA

PC

EF74



22

0221

RIGHT MARGINALIA

PC

EF75



23

0222

TELIA

PC

EF76



6

0146

Punctuation Сharacters
124

Proposal for a unified encoding of Early Cyrillic glyphs
in the Unicode Private Use Area

About the authors …
Victor A. Baranov is Professor and Chair of the Department ofLinguistics at the Izhevsk State Technical University. His main
fields of specialization are the history of Russian language, computational and applied linguistics, full-text databases, and researchand publication of ancient Slavonic manuscripts. He is member of
the International Commission on the Computer-Supported Processing of Medieval Slavonic Manuscripts and Early Printed Books
to the International Committee of Slavists, leader of the Manuscript
project (cf. http://manuscripts.ru/index_en.html).
David J. Birnbaum is Professor and Chair of the Department of
Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh,where his research concentrates on applications of information
technology to the study of medieval Slavic manuscripts. He is amember and past president of the International Commission on
the Computer-Supported Processing of Medieval Slavonic Manuscripts and Early Printed Books to the International Committee of
Slavists and has served on the board of directors of the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) and the TechnicalCouncil of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). He is also one of
the founders of the Repertorium of Old Bulgarian Literature andLetters project.
Ralph Cleminson is a specialist in the paleography and codicology of Cyrillic manuscripts and earlyprinted books, and is currently
working on textual criticism of the Slavonic version of the New
Testament. Like the other authors of this paper, he has been instrumental in expanding the Cyrillic and Glagolitic repertory of Unicode, and is currently president of the Commission on the Computer-Supported Processing of Medieval Slavonic Manuscripts and
Early Printed Books to the International Committee of Slavists.
Heinz Miklas is Professor of Slavic Philology at the Institute of
Slavic studies of Vienna University and Foreign member of the
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Presently, his main research interests are focused on Old Slavonic (Cyrillic and Glagolitic) paleography and graphemics. He is currently engaged in the analysis
and edition of the newly found Glagolitic manuscripts on Mt. Sinai(cf. http://www.caa.tuwien.ac.at/cvl/research/sinai/).

25

V. Baranov, D. J. Birnbaum, R. Cleminson, H. Miklas, A. Rabus
Achim Rabus received his PhD in 2008. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Slavic Linguistics at the University of Freiburg,
Germany. His research interests include contact linguistics, Church
Slavonic as well as Ruthenian language and culture, and computer-assisted processing of medieval Slavic manuscripts.

26