Too narrowly defined: DIVISION SIGN & COLON

On Sun, Jul 8, 2012 at 10:19 PM, Leif Halvard Silli
<xn--mlform-iua_at_xn--mlform-iua.no> wrote:
> III. Conclusions: Proposal for next Unicode update
>
> Proposal 1:
> EITHER division sign should be renamed to division-minus sign.
> OR a new "double dotted minus" character should be added.
>
> Proposal 2:
> EITHER the COLON should be baptized colon-division character.
> OR a new 'division colon' should be added.
> (The RATIO character and Z NOTATION TYPE COLON cannot
> be rebaptized.)

That's interesting, but your proposals aren't going to fly. Unicode
names are descriptive, not prescriptive. Just because it's called
DIVISION SIGN doesn't mean that it has to be used for just division.
(In a couple cases, the name is outright wrong; the LATIN CHARACTER OI
is gha, not oi.) And new characters will not be added just because of
problems with the name. In the case of colon, it would be problematic
and unhelpful. It would provide another lookalike character for people
to exploit--where is C:\autoexec.bat, for example?--and would be used
by very few people, since they all have the colon on their keyboard.

-- 
Kie ekzistas vivo, ekzistas espero.