Re: FW: "MR" in superscript - Spanish translation for "TM"

From: Doug Ewell (dewell@adelphia.net)
Date: Thu Oct 10 2002 - 23:34:08 EDT

  • Next message: Patrick Andries: "Re: FW: "MR" in superscript - Spanish translation for "TM""

    Michael Everson <everson at evertype dot com> wrote:

    > There is no character encoded in Unicode which is a superscript
    > capital M with capital R. I have never seen MR set in type in the
    > same way that TM is, and indeed the abbreviation seems a bit doubtful
    > to me. (Marca Registrada is usually used for 'registered (trade)ark'
    > while "trademark" proper is 'marca de fábrica'.) For "Registered
    > Trademark" you can use the circled R.

    I would add two comments to this:

    First, I found two Web pages ([1], [2]) which said it is acceptable to
    use U+00AE REGISTERED SIGN (®) in place of MR. R can stand for
    "registrada" (es) as well as "registered" (en). Of course, whether that
    is acceptable to 3M is an entirely different matter.

    Superscript-MR apparently does not appear in any other, previously
    existing coded character set. If it did, it almost certainly would have
    been copied into Unicode. So Michael's argument that superscript-MR is
    not a widely used symbol is well taken.

    Second, in trying to answer Cristina's question, some of us fell into
    the trap once again of assuming that all text is fancy text, or can be
    shoehorned into a fancy-text model. This is simply not true. Not every
    text problem can be solved with markup, nor should it. A superscripted
    MR is not the same as an unsuperscripted MR "except for presentation
    formatting." At the least, we should ask before assuming that the text
    in question is HTML or XML.

    -Doug Ewell
     Fullerton, California

    [1] http://www.franquiciasasesoria.com.mx/marca/marcas.asp
    [2] http://www.uach.cl/manualestilo/es_normleg-5.htm



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