Square brackets

From: Nick NICHOLAS (nicholas@uci.edu)
Date: Mon Oct 08 2001 - 20:00:34 EDT


I'm wondering if I could get some clarification on the Unicode corner
brackets.

Unicode encodes the following sets:

2308, 2309, 230A, 230B: LEFT CEILING, RIGHT CEILING, LEFT FLOOR, RIGHT
FLOOR

231C, 231D, 231E, 231F: TOP LEFT CORNER, TOP RIGHT CORNER, BOTTOM LEFT
CORNER, BOTTOM CORNER

300C, 300D: LEFT CORNER BRACKET, RIGHT CORNER BRACKET

In Classical scholarship (and I suspect, beyond it), all four
possible corner
brackets are routinely used as punctuation to delimit text in some way ---
most often to indicate that the enclosed text has been restored by comparison
with another text. In that, they join a long tradition of bracket use
(square brackets, parens, angle brackets, braces, hollow brackets.) I can
post a sample on my web page on request.

Now, CJK punctuation contains the top left and bottom right
corner brackets,
qua brackets, and I also note that the angle brackets in Miscellaneous
Technical, 2329 and 232A, canonically decompose into CJK 3008 and 3009.

However, the bottom corner brackets are absent from CJK. The appropriate
shapes *are* present, both as CEILING/FLOORs and CORNERS. I presume they
can be interspersed with text, but I'd like to double check that.

In other words, for brackets intended as punctuation, is it better to:

(a) propose BOTTOM LEFT CORNER BRACKET and BOTTOM RIGHT CORNER BRACKET, to
complement LEFT CORNER BRACKET and RIGHT CORNER BRACKET? or

(b) to assume that functionality is covered by CEILING/FLOORs or CORNERS
in the Misc. Technical block, even though these are not necessarily
intended to be used as punctuation?

I know concerns like spacing and width are secondary and font-related;
the same goes for their look (I've seen them both rectangular-looking,
like CEILING/FLOOR/CORNER BRACKET, and square, like CORNER ---
obviously just a matter of typographical preference.) But
I would like any such brackets used to be recognised as punctuation, and
I'm not sure the extant symbols in Misc. Technical necessarily would. (The
angle brackets there would, but that's presumably because of their canonical
decomposition into CJK punctuation. I'm presuming the APL use of CEILING
and FLOOR would not make them count as punctuation.)

-- 
==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==
Upon completing His outburst, God fell silent, standing quietly at the
podium for several moments. Then, witnesses reported, God's shoulders
began to shake, and He wept.
[http://www.theonion.com/onion3734/god_clarifies_dont_kill.html]

Nick Nicholas. nicholas@uci.edu http://www.opoudjis.net



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