Re: German »Raute« (was: U+25CA LOZENGE)

2012/8/13 Otto Stolz <Otto.Stolz_at_uni-konstanz.de>:
> Hello,
>
> am 2012-08-13 20:48, schrieb Leif Halvard Silli:
>>
>> The word 'Raute' reminds of the Norwegian 'rute' - and my Norwegian
>> book on etymology assumes that 'rute' is derived from 'Raute'. The
>> Norwegian 'rute' may refer to a cell in a (data) table or in a square
>> board for chess. Such a 'rute' is of course a square. Perhaps German
>> 'Raute' has a similar possibility of being interpreted as square?
>>
>> Btw, the Norwegian for 'diamond', in the playing card sense, is
>> 'ruter'. The 'ruter' in the playing card sense, is easily associated
>> with 'rute' - in other words: square. However, we see that it is not a
>> square, in the "normal" sense. The modern German name for diamond
>> cards, Karo, "geht auf lateinisch quadrum „Viereck, Quadrat“ zurück".
>> <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karo_(Farbe)>
>>
>
> In German, »Raute« is a synonym of »Rhombus«, i. e.
> an equilateral quadrilateral. Hence, every »Raute«
> is a »Quadrat« (square), but not vice versa.
> (A square has also four equal angels.)

Correction:
* Every »Quadrat« (square) is a »Raute« (Rhombus), a Rhombus/Raute
being not restricted to right angles.
* Every »Raute« (Rhombus) is also a lozenge, a lozenge being not
necessarily equilateral like a Raute/Rhombus, but having two pairs of
two connected equal vertices. So a »Quadrat« (square) is also a
lozenge (as well as being also a rectangle).

But in Unicode, the names for the less restricted shapes are not
refering to the particular, more restricted cases : these specific
cases are used to differenciate these restrictions:

So the shape of a "lozenge" character should not have right angles
(otherwise it will be a "square" character, independantly of its
rotation), and thus its diagonals should have different lengths. The
rotation of a lozenge or a square will be significant and should be
encoded distinctly (if they are laying on an horizontal vertex, or if
they have their diagonals oriented horizontally and vertically). It
may happen that the lozenge or square is slightly sheared when shown
in italic style or oblique style, with some fonts or with renderers
synthetizing these styles (in that case their diagonals would no
longer be orthogonal).
Received on Mon Aug 13 2012 - 21:58:45 CDT