Ideographic Rapporteur Group

The Ideographic Rapporteur Group (IRG) is a working group under ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 (see later part of this page) of the ISO. It focuses on the development of ideographic characters (Han characters used in China, Japan, Korea and other parts of Asia) in the ISO 10646 standard. Its mission is to submit ideographic characters for inclusion in the ISO 10646 standard. The IRG has developed the CJK Unified Ideographs Block, the CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A Block, the CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B Block and the CJK Unified Ideographs Extension C Block. The IRG is now developing the Extension D Block so as to include more ideographic characters used in different parts of the world into the ISO 10646 standard.

IRG Members

IRG members include Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taipei Computer Association, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Vietnam and USA. Representatives from the Unicode Consortium also attend IRG meetings for coordinating the synchronization between the ISO 10646 standard and Unicode.

IRG Documents

Various documents of the IRG including meeting agenda, meeting reports submitted to the ISO, resolutions agreed at IRG meetings, etc. are available on the following web site http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~irg/.

ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2

The ISO 10646 standard is defined by a workgroup, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2, under the ISO. The Joint Technical Committee on Information Technology (ISO/IEC JTC1), which was formed by an agreement between the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and the ISO, is responsible for the IT works in both the IEC and ISO. Under the ISO/IEC JTC1, a subcommittee called ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2 is formed with the mission to standardize the coded character sets. Under this subcommittee, there is a working group called ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 which is responsible for the development of the ISO 10646 standard.