Ideographic Description Characters

Ideographic Description Characters is a Unicode block containing graphic characters used for describing CJK ideographs. They are used in Ideographic Description Sequences to provide a description of an ideograph, in terms of what other ideographs make it up and how they are laid out relative to one another. An IDS provides the reader with a description of an ideograph that cannot be represented properly, usually because it is not encoded in Unicode; rendering systems are not intended to automatically compose the pieces into a complete ideograph, and the descriptions are not standardized.
U+2FF0 to U+2FFB were introduced from GBK; U+2FFC to U+2FFF were devised later and introduced in Unicode 15.1.

Ideographic Description Sequences

Ideographic Description Sequences are sequences of characters that represent a Chinese character structure as defined by the Unicode standard.
Below are the 16 characters as defined by Unicode in this block:

Unicode	Symbol	Meaning	Example 1	IDS	Example 2	IDS
U+2FF0	⿰	Two components combined left to right	相	⿰木目	?	⿰丨㇍
U+2FF1	⿱	Two components combined above to below	杏	⿱木口	?	⿱?丶
U+2FF2	⿲	Three components combined left to middle and right	衍	⿲彳氵亍	?	⿲丿夕乚
U+2FF3	⿳	Three components combined above to middle and below	京	⿳亠口小	?	⿳亼目口
U+2FF4	⿴	One component fully wrapping another component	回	⿴囗口	?	⿴㐁人
U+2FF5	⿵	One component surround three sides of another component	凰	⿵几皇	?	⿵齊虫
U+2FF6	⿶	One component surround three sides of another component	凶	⿶凵㐅	义	⿶乂丶
U+2FF7	⿷	One component surround three sides of another component	匠	⿷匚斤	?	⿷虎九
U+2FF8	⿸	One component surround top and left side of another component	病	⿸疒丙	?	⿸耂火
U+2FF9	⿹	One component surround top and right side of another component	戒	⿹戈廾	?	⿹或壬
U+2FFA	⿺	One component surround bottom and left side of another component	超	⿺走召	?	⿺礼分
U+2FFB	⿻	Two components overlapped	巫	⿻工从	?	⿻木⿻コ一
U+2FFC	⿼	One component surround three sides of another component	㕚	⿼叉丶	?	⿼コ二
U+2FFD	⿽	One component surround bottom and right side of another component	氷	⿽水丶	斗	⿽⺀十
U+2FFE	⿾	Horizontal reflection	卐	⿾卍	?	⿾正
U+2FFF	⿿	Rotation	?	⿿凹	?	⿿予

Two other related ideographic description characters are not encoded in this Unicode block, but of which may be used in ideographic description sequences:

Unicode	Symbol	Block	Meaning	Example 1	IDS	Example 2	IDS
U+303E	〾	CJK Symbols and Punctuation	Variant but not equivalent	㬵	〾胶	?	〾爫
U+31EF	㇯	CJK Strokes	Subtraction	乒	㇯兵丶	?	㇯豕一

History

The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Ideographic Description Characters block: