Klingon Unicode Timeline

1. 1996: Klingon support added to Linux kernel
2. September 1997: first Unicode proposal for pIqaD.¹
   1. Roadmapped for codepoints U+12100 - U+121F
3. May 2001: Rick McGowan submits Proposal to Reject Klingon
4. May 2001: Proposal to reject Klingon adopted by UTC (minutes)
   1. Reason given is lack of usage, but that is not the reason Rick’s proposal gives.
   2. This gets Klingon in the Unicode Archive of Notices of Non-Approval
5. October 2003: Mailing list discussion
6. January 2004: Mailing list discussion
7. May 2009: Mailing list discussion
   • Ken Whistler explicitly saying there can be no “undesirables” in encoding, and yet apparently not even believing it himself.
8. July 2015: Mailing list discussion
9. November 2016: New Proposal for Encoding Klingon, showing lots of examples of usage
   1. Resulting mailing list discussion
   2. Toward end of mailing list discussion, Ken Whistler writes that what’s needed is a proposal to get Klingon off the “non-approved” list before anything else can be done.
10. July 2020: Another New Proposal for Encoding Klingon. This one uses the correct “Klingon” names for the letters.
11. August 2021: Request to Remove Klingon from Non-Approval List, made in accordance with Ken Whistler’s suggestion from 2016, linked above.
12. September-October 2021: Script Ad-hoc declines to act on request. Note that it says they could, but they want to have the IP stuff resolved. Not even asking to encode, just asking them to stop saying they won’t encode it!
13. September 2021: Ensuing mailing list discussion
    1. Doug Ewell points out the “dignity” argument, stating plainly that he thinks Unicode is avoiding this to avoid being associated with geeks. Further discussion reaches higher fervor.
14. November 2021: I send email to unicoRe list with first-draft proposed agreement for Paramount. No link because unicoRe list archives are not public. I mistakenly thought this would be a quick question.
    1. Told that I shouldn’t be coming to Paramount with an agreement. That Unicode will talk to them, but apparently only if someone else makes the arrangements (if you guys are going to negotiate this with them, why am I still trying to get this done??)
    2. This led to a mailing list discussion there, which I can’t share with you. Not as long as the ones on the bigger list.