RE: Regional Indicator Symbols

From: Peter Constable <petercon_at_microsoft.com>
Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2012 14:26:03 +0000

From: unicode-bounce_at_unicode.org [unicode-bounce_at_unicode.org] on behalf of Doug Ewell [doug_at_ewellic.org]

> Philippe suggests a mechanism for
> representing flags when Unicode already has one...

>> Next This is not "duplicate encoding". Given that there's no such
>> first encoding of national flags as characters.
>
> But that's the primary use case for Regional Indicator Symbols.

I'm not quite sure I'd say that. The Regional Indicator Symbols were encoded in order to represent 10 emoji used in Japan. 26 characters for 10 emoji may seem like overkill, but it was the only way consensus could be reached. Now, it may be true that those 26 characters could perhaps be used to represent flags of several nations, but that wasn't a goal for the encoding.

Note that the 26 characters U+0041..U+005A can also be used (in appropriate contexts) to represent flags of several nations, and many, many other things as well; but that doesn't imply that that was the primary use case for those characters.

Peter
Received on Mon Jun 04 2012 - 09:31:31 CDT

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