Glyph change for Drachma Sign (U+20AF) (was: Re: Indian Rupee Sign (U+20B9) proposal)

From: Karl Pentzlin (karl-pentzlin@acssoft.de)
Date: Mon Jul 19 2010 - 04:33:22 CDT

  • Next message: Michael Everson: "Re: Glyph change for Drachma Sign (U+20AF) (was: Re: Indian Rupee Sign (U+20B9) proposal)"

    Am Montag, 19. Juli 2010 um 09:22 schrieb Erkki I Kolehmainen:

    EIK> Incidentally, I would have preferred to have the two proposals (in both WG2
    EIK> N3862 and L2/10-249) separated.

    I feel the same (if you refer to the fact that the proposal N3862 =
    L2/10-249 also requests a fundamental glyph change for U+20AF DRACHMA SIGN).

    At least, the glyph change has no special urgency, compared to the new
    Indian Rupee sign.

    Also, the argumentation about such a change is completely different
    from that applying the Indian Rupee sign, and probably will be done in
    both UTC and WG2 in different agenda points.

    Entering the discussion, I do not feel very happy on a fundamental
    glyph change like the one proposed. It may be true that there was no
    such sign in common use in Greece at any time, but absence of evidence
    is not evidence of absence. If there is a small user group which uses
    this symbol for Drachma or anything else, it will not served by such a
    glyph change, but will lose their confidence in Unicode stability.

    At least, there was (as documented in N3862) a formal request by ELOT
    (the Greek national standards body) to encode a symbol like the current
    representative glyph. Thus, unless U+156F, the glyph had entered Unicode
    not just by accident. The "script Δρ" in fact is contained in many
    fonts (e.g. in the common Microsoft fonts Arial, Times New Roman,
    Courier New).
    The new glyph proposed however (a sans-serif boldface Ξ” over P) is
    also no specific design proposed by anybody as distinctive Drachma
    design; I saw the same type of design occasionally for our former
    Deutsche Mark (then a D over M, of course).
    If such in fact is needed (which I do not see at this moment), it should
    be encoded separately.

    In my eyes, the best way to go with the Drachma Sign is the following:
    1. In the character tables, change the annotation "Β· Greece" into something like
       "Β· Requested by ELOT in 1999 for Greece, but not commonly used"
    2. Live with the symbol as it is, as we live with e.g. U+2763.

    - Karl Pentzlin



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