Re: Obsolete characters

From: Mark Davis (mark.edward.davis@gmail.com)
Date: Fri Jan 16 2009 - 10:59:51 CST

  • Next message: Henrik Theiling: "Re: Obsolete characters"

    I want to make sure that I understand your sense of 'necessary'. Clearly
    these characters are necessary for some usages, but the question is whether
    they are in customary modern usage.

    For example, if I picked up the Greek equivalent of the NY Times, or the
    Economist, (and so on) would I find a Ϙ or Ϡ in it, for example? Or would
    such usage be exceedingly rare, similar to the incidence of uses of archaic
    English characters for Anglo-Saxon words in such publications, like "Se
    Romanisc Senatus giefþ tō Gaius Octavius þone tītule Augustus."

    Mark

    On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 04:15, Apostolos Syropoulos
    <ijdt.editor@gmail.com>wrote:

    >
    >
    > 2009/1/15 Mark E. Shoulson <mark@kli.org>
    >
    >> Mark Davis wrote:
    >>
    >>
    >> U+03D8 <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03D8> ( Ϙ ) GREEK
    >> LETTER ARCHAIC KOPPA
    >> U+03D9 <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03D9> ( ϙ ) GREEK
    >> SMALL LETTER ARCHAIC KOPPA
    >> U+03DA <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03DA> ( Ϛ ) GREEK
    >> LETTER STIGMA
    >> U+03DB <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03DB> ( ϛ ) GREEK
    >> SMALL LETTER STIGMA
    >> U+03DC <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03DC> ( Ϝ ) GREEK
    >> LETTER DIGAMMA
    >> U+03DD <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03DD> ( ϝ ) GREEK
    >> SMALL LETTER DIGAMMA
    >> U+03DE <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03DE> ( Ϟ ) GREEK
    >> LETTER KOPPA
    >> U+03DF <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03DF> ( ϟ ) GREEK
    >> SMALL LETTER KOPPA
    >> U+03E0 <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03E0> ( Ϡ ) GREEK
    >> LETTER SAMPI
    >> U+03E1 <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03E1> ( ϡ ) GREEK
    >> SMALL LETTER SAMPI
    >>
    >> Aren't (some of) these still in common use in Greece for representing
    >> numbers?
    >>
    >
    > I am Greek and I can assure you that all these symbols are necessary. The
    > following
    > symbols are not really necesary:
    >
    > U+03D0 <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03D0> ( ϐ ) GREEK
    > BETA SYMBOL
    > U+03D1 <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03D1> ( ϑ ) GREEK
    > THETA SYMBOL
    > U+03D5 <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03D5> ( ϕ ) GREEK
    > PHI SYMBOL
    >
    > They are typographic variants, but the following two are not just
    > typographic variants,
    > thus, they are needed:
    >
    > U+03D6 <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03D6> ( ϖ ) GREEK
    > PI SYMBOL
    > U+03D7 <http://unicode.org/cldr/utility/character.jsp?a=03D7> ( ϗ ) GREEK
    > KAI SYMBOL
    >
    > A.S.
    >
    > --
    > Apostolos Syropoulos
    > 366, 28th October Str.
    > GR-671 00 Xanthi, GREECE
    > Web-page at http://obelix.ee.duth.gr/~apostolo>
    > Blogs at     http://asyropoulos.wordpress.com/
    > http://hypercomputation.blogspot.com/
    >

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