Re: Roman (and other) numismatic marks

From: Doug Ewell (dewell@adelphia.net)
Date: Wed Jun 09 2004 - 02:40:48 CDT

  • Next message: Anto'nio Martins-Tuva'lkin: "Re: Roman (and other) numismatic marks"

    Mark E. Shoulson <mark at kli dot org> wrote:

    > Michael Everson wrote:

    Actually Michael Everson was quoting Doug Ewell, but whatever:

    >> Krause used "Mo" because there was no other plain-text way to show
    >> M-with-o-above. Hint hint.
    >
    > What's wrong with 004D 030A ? That's what it looks like to me.

    Or better yet, 004D 0366, as Ernest Cline suggested (and as I had said
    earlier in the summary post Mark quoted).

    But while we Unicode front-liners may have fonts with a glyph for
    U+0366, and Uniscribe or a similar Unicode-aware rendering engine,
    catalog publishers and others with otherwise-minimal script needs may
    not.

    More importantly, mint marks, like currency signs, are indivisible
    entities. They aren't just ordinary letters with a combining mark, the
    way Ñ is just an N with a tilde over it. Take a look at the Web page
    James cited, with its screen shot of a numismatic database. You will
    see many mint mark images that cannot be created from any combination of
    existing Unicode characters.

    This is not an open-ended collection of glyphs. Coins, and ancient
    coins in particular, have been studied and categorized for centuries by
    experts, investors, and enthusiasts alike. There is widespread
    agreement as to which "glyph variations" represent the same abstract
    mint mark.

    -Doug Ewell
     Fullerton, California
     http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/



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