Re: Greek Sigma

From: Michael Everson (everson@indigo.ie)
Date: Mon Dec 01 1997 - 12:23:31 EST


Ar 09:23 -0800 1997-12-01, scríobh Kenneth Whistler:
>
>It doesn't have anything to do with their mathematical function, but
>rather with the source encoded character sets that were in consideration
>when the original collection of characters was pulled together.
>
>U+00B5 MICRO SIGN is in ISO/IEC 8859-1 ("Latin-1"), and in the preexisting
>ISO nomenclature was distinguished from U+03BC GREEK SMALL LETTER MU. There
>was no choice but to provide for separate encoding in Unicode.
>
>The encoding for Greek Sigma is dependent on the preexisting encoding of
>ISO/IEC 8859-7, as well as the Greek encodings that standard is derivative
>from.
>
>U+2126 OHM SIGN and U+2135 ALEF SYMBOL, and other letterlike symbols that
>ended up with separate encodings also had preexisting separate treatments
>in at least one source encoded character set.

This is why GREEK SMALL LETTER PI is used for 3.14... and why that
important number doesn't have its own encoding? I always felt that it was
weird that such an important number was left as a letter while so many
others were not.

--
Michael Everson, EGT * http://www.indigo.ie/egt
15 Port Chaeimhghein Íochtarach; Baile Átha Cliath 2; Éire (Ireland)
Gutháin:  +353 1 478-2597, +353 1 283-9396
27 Páirc an Fhéithlinn; Baile an Bhóthair; Co. Átha Cliath; Éire



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