As the scope of electronic document expands, the importance of information interchange by electronic, and particularly marked-up, document increases. This leads to the increase in the amount and variety of symbols which need to be represented in electronic document. However, it requires a set of agreed and finite symbols with unique identifiers, i.e. a coded character set. As it is put to more general use, the ability to incorporate non-predefined symbols is required.

Currently, various workarounds are employed to meet this requirement. One example is to embed non-predefined symbols as an image. Although this works fine in terms of human-readability alone, but considerably constrains the reusability and processability of electronic document based upon its logical structure and semantics. One of the solution is an open registry which maintains non-standardised symbols so that they may be shared and referenced from multiple electronic documents.

ISO/IEC 10036, defines a mechanism where a designated registration authority (RA) registers glyphs, or any other font-related symbols upon request, and give each object an identifier on a non-discriminatory basis. One of the application of this mechanism is the glyph identification method defined in a W3C Note: "Embedding Glyph Identifiers in XML Documents".

The Center for Global Communications (GLOCOM), in Tokyo, Japan, has been designated as RA since August 2001. As of 1 May 2003, GLOCOM maintains 151,367 objects, consisting of the 65,022 glyphs which were inherited from the former RA, and 86,345 newly added glyphs. Most of these glyphs are inherited from the former RA, the Association for Font Information Interchange (AFII), and contributed from the Mojikyo Institute.

Before GLOCOM took over, the glyph registry used to be maintained as an offline database, which made the browsing of the registry difficult. To enhance usaility, GLOCOM, as a new RA, has been engaged in works to make the registry available online. Although most of the work is still underway, interested individuals and parties are welcome to visit the current registry at http://www.glocom.ac.jp/iso10036/.

In the future, all other functions required for the full-functioning glyph registry, such as browsing, new registration requests, collation of glyphs, will be available online.

Symbols in this glyph registry are published based upon registration alone, whereas characters in a coded character set are published as an authoritative standard based upon international approval. The approach of the glyph registry gives a faster solution, where a single point of reference is required, although international agreement or authority is not.

Glyphs in the registry may be the ones whose exemplified image is not listed in an authoritative character set, or may be the ones which by nature should not be listed on an authoritative character table. Thus, it would be more rational and appropriate to have these entities in the glyph registry, rather than in standardised character tables.

In addition, the scope of the glyph registry is expected to go beyond traditional glyphs, such as variants of a standard character, to incorporate "extended glyphs". Extended glyphs may include visual representations like corporate logos and multimedia entities composed of audio, video and animation. They often appear repeatedly in various electronic documents, and giving these symbol-like objects identifiers would further expand the potential of information interchange by electronic document.