From: Marco Cimarosti (marco.cimarosti@essetre.it)
Date: Wed May 28 2003 - 07:21:13 EDT
Andrew C. West wrote:
> I agree with Philippe on this one. A sensible, and easily
> understandable, motto
> like "The world speaks Unicode" would be much better. The
> word "savvy" just
> sends a shiver of embarrasment down my spine. Not only is
> "savvy" not a word
> that is probably high in the vocabulary list of non-English
> speakers, but I
> don't think many native English speakers would ever use it by
> choice (maybe it's
> just me, but I really loathe the word).
Yes, you are right. I never heard the word "savvy" before this morning.
My English-Italian dictionary has two "savvy" entries: an adjective (labeled
"fam. amer." = "US English, informal") and a noun (labeled "antiq. / fam." =
"archaic or informal"). However, all the translations have to do with
"common sense", and none of them seems to explain the intuitive meaning of
"Unicode savvy", which I guess is supposed to be: "Unicode enabled",
"Unicode supported", "encoded in Unicode", etc.
Another i18n problem is the lettering: the unusual legation of the first
three letters and the mix-up of upper- and lower-case forms can make the
text completely unintelligible to people not familiar with handwritten forma
of the Latin alphabet. I guess that many people would wonder in what strange
alphabet "Unicode" is written "Ɯ̇CODƏ".
About the V-shaped tick in the square, that is so deformed and stylized that
it might be hard to recognize. Keep in mind that this symbol is quite
English-specific; in many parts of the world, different signs are used to
tick squares on paper forms (e.g., "X", "O", a filled square, etc.). The
English-style tick is only seen on GUI interfaces like Windows, Mac, etc.
I also share the concerns about colors: beside their ugliness (I would have
never imagined that that curious yellow could be called "pink"), they fail
to recall the red and white of the well-know Unicode logo. If I didn't know
it before seeing them, I would never have associated those icons with the
Unicode standard or the Unicode Consortium.
My humble suggestions would be:
1) Replace the semi-dialectal "Unicode savvy" with a clearer motto (such as
"encoded in Unicode", or the other phrases suggested by others); possibly,
check that all the words used are in the high-frequency part of the English
lexicon.
2) Use the regular squared Unicode logo which is seen in the top-left corner
of the Unicode web site. That's already famous and immediately hints to
Unicode.
3) Compose the motto (*including* the word "Unicode") in an widespread and
well-readable typeface, in black or un one of the colors of the Unicode
logo.
4) Make the "V" tick sign as similar as possible to a square root symbol,
because that is the glyph which has been popularized by GUI interfaces.
Ciao.
Marco
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