Re: missing symbol?

From: Richard Wordingham (richard.wordingham@ntlworld.com)
Date: Sat Feb 10 2007 - 14:53:14 CST

  • Next message: Richard Wordingham: "Re: Tally marks (was: Re: missing symbol?)"

    Philippe Verdy wrote on Saturday, February 10, 2007 7:44 PM

    > Did you look for "Counting rods"? This is a wellknown system and certainly
    > the most ancient system of digits. This system later gave the Pheonician
    > numeric system, the old Greek numeric system and the Roman system, before
    > the adoption of positional notation with distinct forms for digits.

    We need homographs of U+1D369..U+1D36C COUNTING RODS TENS DIGIT ONE..FOUR!
    These vertically stroked characters have the numeric values 10..40 (given in
    UnicodeData.txt), whereas in the tally scheme we are talking of the
    vertically stroked symbols have the values 1..4, as the similar Roman
    numerals or AEGEAN NUMBER ONE..THREE.

    > Note that in counting rods numeric systems, there's no standard for the
    > number of rods that must be striked out: it could be 4, or 5 or 10; the
    > strike may be oblique (solidus) or horizontal. The rods may be disposed in
    > other ways (for example in a square), the direction of the oblique is not
    > defined.

    So we have different characters, depending whether the total is 4, 5 or 10.
    So long as the implied glyphs are different, these characters can still have
    the numeric property. I wouldn't object to the choice of oblique direction
    being declared a matter of glyph variation.

    Richard.



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