From: Mark E. Shoulson (mark@kli.org)
Date: Tue Apr 05 2011 - 21:18:05 CDT
On 04/05/2011 09:31 PM, Asmus Freytag wrote:
> Even when the underlying objects are identical (or "unifiable")
> doesn't mean it follows that it's appropriate to unify different
> representations of them on another layer (the writing layer).
> Characters are an abstraction for the purpose of writing, and not
> entities that directly represent real-world objects.
>
> This fact alone would suffice to convince me that the decision to
> encode any playing card symbols was carried out on an insufficiently
> thought through basis and that one is best off abandoning the existing
> symbols as "mistakes" (or compatibility characters that map to other
> character set implementers "mistakes".)
I'm don't know; I'm pretty sure I've seen playing-card images (and not
♠A) used in plain-text contexts. Yes, ideally I should find some
examples and scan them for you. But encoding the cards does not strike
me immediately as a mistake. And given those, the major arcana are
defensible.
Not so sure about the hatching squares, though. Much as I love
blazonry, I can't really picture them in a truly plain-text setting.
~mark
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Apr 05 2011 - 21:21:51 CDT