Re: Quick survey of Apple symbol fonts (in context of the Wingding/Webding proposal)

From: Asmus Freytag <asmusf_at_ix.netcom.com>
Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 13:25:35 -0700

Karl,

I've published similar "surveys" in the past, where the object was to
get feedback on the desirability of further action. I stick by my
recommendation in favor of keeping "raw data" out of the document
registry and of doing the committee a favor by "adding value" in form of
a sifting or "analysis" of such data.

Previewing the data is not the same as making a character encoding
proposal, and there aren't any procedural rules for "non-proposals", so
there's nothing that prevents doing that. I have always provided some
level of analysis, and I have not always chosen to register all such
documents - for the reasons I gave you earlier.

The original rationale for encoding certain symbols had been their
widespread use. The word "widespread" is key here. At the time that
Unicode was first created, symbol sets associated with printers defined
widespread use. After these sets were backed into the 2600 and 2700
blocks, the phenomenal rise of Windows made the W/W-Dings sets even more
widespread.

As you and WG2 evaluate additional such widely disseminated fonts, you
will need to come up with your own criteria of what constitutes
"widespread". Those criteria should be applied both to the fonts
considered as potential source of symbols, as well as to each category
of symbols within these fonts.

I'll be interested in looking at a list of Apple symbols, once it's
categorized a bit better by symbol function and / or gives a better idea
of which (and how many) symbols extend existing sets (e.g. by adding
directional variants) and which (and how many) might possibly be only
variants of existing symbols - and similar information like that.
(Unlike a full character encoding proposal I would not expect definite
answers to these, but some tentative / approximate information would be
nice).

A./
Received on Sat Jul 16 2011 - 15:29:16 CDT

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