U+0191, U+0192 [F with hook] (was: Re: A basic question on encoding Latin characters)

From: Karl Pentzlin (karl-pentzlin@acssoft.de)
Date: Thu Sep 30 1999 - 09:21:35 EDT


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Michael Everson <everson@indigo.ie>
An: Unicode List <unicode@unicode.org>
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 30. September 1999 13:48
Betreff: Re: A basic question on encoding Latin characters

> ...
>
> The standard encodes:
>
> U+0191 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER F WITH HOOK
> U+0192 LATIN SMALL LETTER F WITH HOOK
>
> The second of these is currently unified with *FLORIN SIGN, which is used
> as a currency sign and (on the Mac for instance) as an abbreviation for
> "folder" in directory names. The problem is that the *FLORIN SIGN is
almost
> always drawn as a swash italic, while the African letter is supposed to
> have its usual vertical alignment in plain text. *FLORIN SIGN is widely
> implemented on Macs and PCs and has been mapped to U+0192.
>
> Possible choices:
>
> 1. Do nothing. Leave it to the font makers to make special fonts for Ewe.
>
> 2. Do nothing now. Wait for Ewe users to complain.
>
> 3. Disunify. Add FLORIN SIGN to the currency symbol block and remap Mac
and
> PC characters to it instead of U+0192.
>
> 4. Disunify. Add LATIN SMALL LETTER AFRICAN F WITH HOOK and change the
case
> mapping for U+0191 to this rather than to U+0192.
>
> It is necessary for industry to assess the costs and benefits of
> disunification.

-----------
If choice 3 is considered best of these, maybe there is an even more
appropriate choice:

5. Disunify. Add FLORIN SIGN to the currency symbol block. Add a FOLDER
SYMBOL to the Miscellaneous Symbols block (or wherever appropriate) [or
choose an already existing symbol] and remap Mac characters to it instead of
U+0192, as long as the use of that character there is predominantly the
"folder" abbreviation.

If a remapping is due anyway, in my opinion a misuse of a character of a
group with specific purpose (currency symbol, in this case) for a completely
different purpose should not be introduced in advance, without any
compelling reason.

Regards
Karl Pentzlin
AC&S Analysis Consulting & Software GmbH
Ganghoferstraße 128
D-81373 München, Germany



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