Arabic Presentation Forms-A

See also: Arabic Presentation Forms-B (Unicode block) and Alphabetic Presentation Forms (Unicode block)
For a list of all Arabic characters encoded in Unicode, see Arabic script in Unicode.
Arabic Presentation Forms-A
RangeU+FB50..U+FDFF
(688 code points)
PlaneBMP
ScriptsArabic (629 char.)
Common (2 char.)
Major alphabetsCentral Asian languages
Pashto
Persian
Kurdish
Sindhi
Urdu
Symbol setscontextual forms
multi-letter and
word ligatures
Assigned631 code points
Unused25 reserved code points
32 non-characters
Unicode version history
1.1 (1993)593 (+593)
3.2 (2002)594 (+1)
4.0 (2003)595 (+1)
6.0 (2010)611 (+16)
14.0 (2021)631 (+20)
Unicode documentation
Code chart ∣ Web page
Note: [1][2]
This range was initially part of the Private Use Area in Unicode 1.0.0,[3] and removed from it in Unicode 1.0.1.[4]

Arabic Presentation Forms-A is a Unicode block encoding contextual forms and ligatures of letter variants needed for Persian, Urdu, Sindhi and Central Asian languages. This block also allocates 32 noncharacters in Unicode, designed specifically for internal use.

The presentation forms are present only for compatibility with older standards such as codepage 864 used in DOS, and are typically used in visual and not logical order.[5] It has been agreed no further presentation forms will be encoded; though the block still sees further encodings including a contiguous range of 32 noncharacters. [6]

  1. ^ "Unicode character database". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
  2. ^ "Enumerated Versions of The Unicode Standard". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
  3. ^ "3.5: Private Use Area" (PDF). The Unicode Standard, Version 1.0, Volume 1. Unicode Consortium. 1991. pp. 118–119. ISBN 0-201-56788-1.
  4. ^ "Version 1.0.1 Notice Page" (PDF). Unicode Consortium.
  5. ^ The Unicode Consortium. The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0.0, (Mountain View, CA: The Unicode Consortium, 2011. ISBN 978-1-936213-01-6), Chapter 8
  6. ^ "Private-Use Characters, Noncharacters & Sentinels FAQ". www.unicode.org. Retrieved 2023-07-24.