From: James Kass (thunder-bird@earthlink.net)
Date: Sun Nov 25 2007 - 08:33:35 CST
Roman numerals originated from Etruscan symbols. There's an
interesting Wikipedia article about it at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numerals
Jukka K. Korpela has politely and patiently explained the situation
concerning Roman numerals.
Some people make distinctions between Roman numerals and
Latin uppercase letters, and I'm one of them.
I was taught, way back in elementary school, to write Roman
numerals with connecting bars above and below. Those bars
distinguish the numerals from letters.
When I designed glyphs for Roman numerals, I incorporated
that notion into the design.
So, when I want to represent a Roman numeral in plain text,
I will use the Unicode Roman numeral characters for doing so.
Best regards,
James Kass
P.S. - In my opinion, lowercase Latin letters aren't proper Roman
numerals at all. So, I strongly discourage people from using lowercase
letters to represent Roman numerals. (But, don't let that stop you
if you are so inclined. <emoticon>)
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