Re: Encoding the fish symbol

From: John Hudson (john@tiro.ca)
Date: Sat Sep 29 2007 - 20:08:44 CDT

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    Doug Ewell wrote:

    > If this symbol is encoded, it will probably see much more common use in
    > quarter-page advertisements in the Yellow Pages for plumbers and
    > attorneys and auto mechanics...

    Quite likely, but how a character might end up most commonly used seems irrelevant to the
    question of whether there is a need for it to be encoded. Personally, I don't think a need
    for a Christian fish symbol encoding can be made from 'quarter-page advertisements in the
    Yellow Pages for plumbers and attorneys and auto mechanics'* since one doesn't need to be
    able to do anything with the symbol in that context that is text-specific: any number of
    vector or bitmap graphics formats are adequate ways to handle it. [I don't consider the
    fact that outline format fonts are convenient carriers of vector graphics a good reason
    for treating something as text.]

    So what I'll be looking for, to make a case for encoding the Christian fish symbol, is its
    use in contexts where people may wish to perform text-specific operations relative to the
    symbol, e.g. searching a corpus of documents for occurences.

    JH

    * But then I question whether quite a few of the Miscellaneous Symbol characters really
    need to exist.

    -- 
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