Re: U+25CA LOZENGE - why is it in the "Mac OS Roman" character set (and therefore widespread in current fonts)?

Karl Pentzlin, Mon, 13 Aug 2012 15:04:24 +0200:
> Am Montag, 13. August 2012 um 14:24 schrieb Michael Everson:
>
> ME> On 13 Aug 2012, at 12:37, Karl Pentzlin wrote:
>>> Why is U+25CA ◊ LOZENGE in the "Mac OS Roman" character set (at
>>> 0xD7 = 215, and therefore contained in several common fonts like
>>> Arial or Times New Roman)?
> ME> Because they put it there in 1984.
>
> My intent is to get information *why* the character was considered
> that important at that time to be included into an 8-bit character set
> with its limited space.

Mac fonts also included ƒ (LATIN SMALL LETTER F WITH HOOK). This was
due to the fact that names of folders used the name 'foo ƒ] - or 'foo
U+0192', if you wish. It was, however, usually only when the system or
an app created a folder name that the ƒ was added. Humans creating a
folder name seldom added it, I think.

So I suspect that U+25CA ◊ LOZENGE was used in some visible place in
the system and/or in applications. I have used Mac since roughly System
7, but I don't remember what the U+25CA ◊ LOZENGE was used for. But I
have a vague memory of having seen it in some outline - thus, where the
bullets are used e.g. in HTML unordered lists (<ul>). If so, then it
was a character that, like the ƒ, was not typed by users very often.

> The problem I am confronted with is that this
> character shares its German name "Raute" with the "#", and I have to
> consider any historical use of the (real) lozenge when describing
> the "#" in a keyboard-related German publication I have to make.

On my Norwegian Mac keyboard, I must type Option+Shift+A to get the ◊.
And the difficult shortcut is another indication that it is not used
very often.

-- 
leif halvard silli