On June 18, 2026, I received a message I had been working toward for months. Rebecca Bettencourt, the maintainer of the Under-ConScript Unicode Registry, confirmed that Yapiri Script was now live — formally registered, publicly documented, and assigned its own block in the UCSUR: U+F1CA0–U+F1CFF.
It was a quiet moment. I read the confirmation once, then again. Then I sat with it for a while.
This post is the full account of what led to that moment — the technical decisions behind v2.0, the reasons three characters were removed, why the codepoint block moved from BMP to Plane 15, and what registration in the UCSUR actually means for Kokborok and its future.
First, What Is the UCSUR?
The Under-ConScript Unicode Registry is a recognized community standard for assigning Private Use Area codepoints to constructed and indigenous scripts that are not yet — or may never be — encoded in the official Unicode Standard. It is maintained by Rebecca Bettencourt and is the most authoritative registry of its kind.
Registration in the UCSUR does three important things:
- Resolves conflicts — it ensures Yapiri’s codepoints do not clash with any other registered script
- Creates a public record — the script’s existence, structure, and codepoint range are permanently documented and publicly accessible
- Builds credibility — registration signals that the script is serious, stable, and ready for wider use
For a script like Yapiri — created by a community for a living language — this kind of formal recognition matters enormously. It is the first step on the road that ultimately leads toward Unicode itself.
Why v2.0 Was Necessary
Yapiri v1.0 was built in the BMP Private Use Area, in the block U+E000–U+E02D. This was a natural starting point — the BMP PUA is accessible, widely supported, and easy to work with.
But there was a problem. The Tengwar script — the writing system invented by J.R.R. Tolkien, one of the most widely used constructed scripts in the world — occupies a registered UCSUR block that overlaps significantly with where Yapiri v1.0 lived. Using the same codepoints as Tengwar would mean that any system with a Tengwar font installed would display Tengwar glyphs instead of Yapiri glyphs. That is a fundamental, unsolvable conflict.
The only clean solution was to move Yapiri to its own dedicated, conflict-free block — and to register that block formally so the same problem could never happen again.
Plane 15 of Unicode (U+F0000–U+FFFFF) is reserved entirely for Private Use and has abundant unoccupied space. The UCSUR allocates blocks here for exactly this purpose. Our new block — U+F1CA0–U+F1CFF — is clean, documented, and ours.
“A script deserves its own address. With UCSUR registration, Yapiri finally has one that belongs to no one else.”
— Yapiri Project, June 2026What Changed: v1.0 to v2.0
The migration was not just a codepoint shift. It was an opportunity to refine the character inventory itself — to drop what was unnecessary and redesign what was imperfect. Here is a precise account of every significant change.
The Codepoint Migration
Every character moved from the BMP PUA (U+E0xx) to the new UCSUR Plane 15 block (U+F1Cxx). The font, keyboard, and all website content were updated accordingly. If you downloaded the v1.0 font, you will need to install v2.0 — the glyphs look the same, but they now live at different addresses.
Three Characters Removed
v2.0 has 45 characters. v1.0 had 49. The difference is three characters that were retired after careful review:
| Character | Status | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| f | Dropped | Not a native Kokborok phoneme. Loanwords that use this sound are already well served by ph, which exists in the inventory and is phonetically closer to how the sound appears in Kokborok speech. |
| chh | Dropped | Redundant. The aspirated affricate it represented is covered by ch in authentic Kokborok phonology. The separate character created ambiguity without adding clarity. |
| Reduplication mark | Dropped | Kokborok reduplication is a grammatical process, not a phonemic feature. Encoding it as a diacritic conflated two different levels of linguistic structure. Reduplication is handled through normal spelling in v2.0. |
The High Tone Mark Redesigned
In v1.0 the high tone mark was borrowed from the Unicode combining acute accent (U+0301). In v2.0 it has its own dedicated codepoint at U+F1CD1 and its own purpose-designed glyph — a footed rising stroke that feels visually native to Yapiri rather than borrowed from Latin typography. A stylistic alternate (crook variant) is available as an OpenType ss01 feature.
The v2.0 Character Inventory
The complete v2.0 inventory of 45 characters, all in the block U+F1CA0–U+F1CFF:
- 6 vowels — a, e, i, u, o, ə (schwa)
- 21 native consonants — p, t, k, b, d, g, ph, th, kh, ch, j, m, n, n′, ng, s, r, l, h, y, w
- 2 secondary consonants — v and z, for loanword sounds not native to Kokborok
- 10 numerals — 0 through 9
- 5 punctuation marks — comma, full stop, exclamation mark, quotation mark, question mark
- 1 combining diacritic — the high tone mark at U+F1CD1
This is a clean, minimal, principled inventory. Every character earns its place. Nothing is included for completeness alone — each glyph represents a genuine need in written Kokborok.
The Moment of Confirmation
The proposal was submitted to the UCSUR on June 12, 2026. Six days later, Rebecca Bettencourt confirmed it live, with a backlink to yapiriscript.com in the registry entry.
There is something quietly profound about that backlink. It means that anyone who searches the UCSUR for scripts in Plane 15 will find Yapiri — documented, named, placed in context alongside hundreds of other writing systems from communities and creators around the world who care about language enough to build something for it.
Kokborok now has a seat at that table.
What This Means Going Forward
UCSUR registration is not the destination. It is a waypoint — the most important one we have reached so far, and a clear marker of the road ahead.
With a formally registered, conflict-free block, Yapiri can now:
- Be distributed with confidence that its codepoints will not clash with other scripts
- Be cited in academic and linguistic documentation with a stable reference
- Build toward a formal Unicode proposal with a documented codepoint history
- Serve as the foundation for tools, apps, and educational software that need reliable encoding
The path to Unicode is long — it requires substantial documentation, community adoption data, and a formal proposal process. But every significant journey requires a first verified address. Yapiri now has one.
Thank You
To Rebecca Bettencourt and the UCSUR — thank you for maintaining a registry that gives scripts like Yapiri a place in the world before the world is ready to give them one officially.
To everyone who has used the font, installed the keyboard, written in Yapiri, and shared it with others — your use is what makes registration meaningful. A script in a registry is just data. A script in people’s hands is a living thing.
Yapiri is both now.
Download the v2.0 font and keyboard. Write something. Leave your footprints.
Community Thoughts
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