Feature #15195: Deal with new Japanese era

• Status: Closed
• Assignee: duerst (Martin Dürst)
• Target version: -

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

As most people in Japan should know by now, a new era of the Japanese calendar will start in May 2019.

It is not clear when the new era name will be announced, but it may be at rather short notice.

The Unicode consortium has made up a plan about how to deal with this, see http://blog.unicode.org/2018/09/new-japanese-era.html. Among else, they will encode an equivalent of the current ㍽, ㍼, ㍻, and plan to publish a special version of the Unicode standard numbered 12.1.

We should start to discuss and tentatively decide what (if anything) will be needed for Ruby. Alternatives include the following two and others inbetween.

• Follow past years where the update to a new Unicode version is done with the Ruby version release around Christmas. That would mean we upgrade to Unicode 12 around Christmas 2019. At that time, we can include the changes in 12.1 without any problems.

• Implement the upgrade to Unicode 12 as quickly as possible in trunk, implement Unicode 12.1 as soon as available in trunk, and backport the changes needed for the new era name to older Ruby versions.

[naruse (Yui NARUSE)]

Both plans are OK, but the latter seems fun for this big event.

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

Link to (request for) feedback on this issue from Rails: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rubyonrails-core/fZUk1qXRT5k.

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

• Related to Feature #15321: Update Unicode data to Unicode Version 12.0.0 added

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

• Related to deleted (Feature #15321: Update Unicode data to Unicode Version 12.0.0)

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

• Blocked by Feature #15321: Update Unicode data to Unicode Version 12.0.0 added

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

There has been an announcement recently in the Japanese news that the Japanese government will make sure the new era name is being published at least one month before the era change. The era change is planned for May 1st, 2019. This means that the new era name should be know on April 1st, 2019 at the latest.

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

According to https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/12/06/national/politics-diplomacy/japan-mulls-announcing-new-era-name-april-11-sources/#.XBQPC6qWxD8, the announcement of the new area name may be postponed until about April 11.

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

• Blocked by Bug #15641: Backport update to Unicode Version 12.0.0 back to Ruby 2.6 branch added

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

• Assignee set to duerst (Martin Dürst)

I have verified that with the beta files for Unicode Version 12.1.0 at https://www.unicode.org/Public/12.1.0/ucd/, Ruby compiles and runs all tests (make check) successfully.

Please note that different from other betas, this beta uses dummy data: The dummy for the new Japanese era name is 左右 (left right):

32FF;SQUARE ERA NAME SAYUU;So;0;L;<square> 5DE6 53F3;;;;N;;;;;

which is guaranteed to change.

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

• Blocks Bug #15740: Backport Unicode Version 12.1.0 and other Japanese new era issues to Ruby 2.6 added

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

• Subject changed from How to deal with new Japanese era to Deal with new Japanese era

Changed title from "How to deal with new Japanese era" to "Deal with new Japanese era".

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

The new era name has been announced a few minutes ago:

令和 U+4EE4 U+548C

Reading: REIWA

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

• Related to Feature #15742: Add Date#jisx0301 support new Japanese era added

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

A beta release for Unicode 12.1.0 should be available by tomorrow. The official release of Unicode 12.1.0 is planned for May 7.

This raises the question of whether we should release a Ruby version before May 1st (with the beta data) or after May 7th. For the former, we would have to cheat a bit by introducing some logic into the build process that can pretend that a beta version is already final.

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

duerst (Martin Dürst) wrote:

This raises the question of whether we should release a Ruby version before May 1st (with the beta data) or after May 7th. For the former, we would have to cheat a bit by introducing some logic into the build process that can pretend that a beta version is already final.

My preference, also for issue #15742, would be to move ahead, so that Ruby users who need the new functionality can get it.

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

• Related to Misc #15750: Switch Unicode Version 12.1.0 back from beta to final added

[duerst (Martin Dürst)]

• Status changed from Open to Closed