Proposal 7 Anuary 1 (2010-12-21)
NOTE: This is still a proposed encoding and has not been standardized. Original Tonal System book is available here.
In 1859, John W. Nystrom proposed a hexadecimal (base 16) system of notation, arithmetic, and metrology called the Tonal System. In addition to new weights and measures, his proposal included a new calendar with sixteen months, a new system of coinage, and a hexadecimal clock with sixteen hours in a day. This first hexadecimal system, proposed in the 19th century, initially had no success at all. However, more recently base 16 has grown popular, and the Tonal system may become useful for academics and other enthusiasts. In order to provide a standard Tonal character coding for such persons, it is herein proposed that this character set be used within the Private Use Area until adoption is widespread enough to justify inclusion in the Unicode standard and ISO 10646.
The Tonal digits themselves are named, in order and beginning with the English zero, noll, an, de, ti, go, su, by, ra, me, ni, ko, hu, vy, la, po, and fy. Noll (zero) through Me (eight) use the same Arabic glyphs as the decimal system (U+0030 - U+0038). This script defines new graphs for the digits ni, ko, hu, vy, la, po, and fy.
The Tonal system also defines new units, called meters, galls, tims, pons, horse-powers, dollars, and temps. The abridgement of the units are noted by capital letters (except for temps, which use the digraph Tp), and the multiplication and division of the same as an exponent by a small letter placed before or after the unit, thus, Mᵗ = Meterton, ᵗM = Tonmeter, Gˢ = Gallsan, Tˢ = Timsan, Pᵐ = Ponmills, etc. These multiplications and divisions, being represented by superscripted and normal letters, are already encoded in Unicode, and should be used uniformly for Tonal units:
| U+1D47 | MODIFIER LETTER SMALL B | bong |
| U+1D50 | MODIFIER LETTER SMALL M | mill |
| U+02E2 | MODIFIER LETTER SMALL S | san |
| U+1D57 | MODIFIER LETTER SMALL T | ton |
In this system, music is rearranged into five new clefs, called Canto, Alto, Treble, Tenor, and Bass. These new clefs are encoded, and can be used along with the classical musical symbols encoded at U+1D100.
The Tonal block is divided into the following ranges:
| U+E9D0 | -> | U+E9DF | Digits |
| U+E9E0 | -> | U+E9EF | Musical clefs |
| U+E9D0 | (This position shall not be used) |
| U+E9D1 | (This position shall not be used) |
| U+E9D2 | (This position shall not be used) |
| U+E9D3 | (This position shall not be used) |
| U+E9D4 | (This position shall not be used) |
| U+E9D5 | (This position shall not be used) |
| U+E9D6 | (This position shall not be used) |
| U+E9D7 | (This position shall not be used) |
| U+E9D8 | (This position shall not be used) |
| U+E9D9 | TONAL HEXADECIMAL DIGIT NINE |
| U+E9DA | TONAL HEXADECIMAL DIGIT TEN |
| U+E9DB | TONAL HEXADECIMAL DIGIT ELEVEN |
| U+E9DC | TONAL HEXADECIMAL DIGIT TWELVE |
| U+E9DD | TONAL HEXADECIMAL DIGIT THIRTEEN |
| U+E9DE | TONAL HEXADECIMAL DIGIT FOURTEEN |
| U+E9DF | TONAL HEXADECIMAL DIGIT FIFTEEN |
| U+E9E0 | TONAL MUSICAL SYMBOL CANTO CLEF |
| U+E9E1 | TONAL MUSICAL SYMBOL ALTO CLEF |
| U+E9E2 | TONAL MUSICAL SYMBOL TREBLE CLEF |
| U+E9E3 | TONAL MUSICAL SYMBOL TENOR CLEF |
| U+E9E4 | TONAL MUSICAL SYMBOL BASS CLEF |
| U+E9E5 | (This position reserved) |
| U+E9E6 | (This position reserved) |
| U+E9E7 | (This position reserved) |
| U+E9E8 | (This position reserved) |
| U+E9E9 | (This position reserved) |
| U+E9EA | (This position reserved) |
| U+E9EB | (This position reserved) |
| U+E9EC | (This position reserved) |
| U+E9ED | (This position reserved) |
| U+E9EE | (This position reserved) |
| U+E9EF | (This position reserved) |
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