Re: Unicode, colours and (hiero)glyphs

From: Guy Steele (Guy.Steele@sun.com)
Date: Fri Jan 27 2006 - 11:21:12 CST

  • Next message: James Kass: "Re: combining characters using ZWJ"

    On Jan 27, 2006, at 8:58 AM, saqqara wrote:
    ...

    > A hypothetical example of what would happen if colour were crucial.
    > Suppose the signs (determinatives) for man and woman were to look
    > IDENTICAL apart from skin colour (this is NOT the case in Egyptian
    > where the characteristic sign shapes are also distinct). Unicode
    > would still allocate a code for each on the basis these are clearly
    > different characters. A monochrome font designer may or may not
    > want to make some ad-hoc distinction in glyph appearance but that
    > is another issue. No problem here for the Unicode character/glyph
    > model.
    >
    I agree that there should be no problem for the Unicode model.

    It's worth pointing out that some technical fields, such as heraldry,
    already have standard conventions for indicating intended colors
    in black-and-white informative drawings. (See, for example,
    "A Complete Guide to Heraldry" by A. C. Fox-Davies, or the table at
    http://www.angelfire.com/folk/dacia/heraldry/blazon.htm .)

    --Guy Steele



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