From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Wed Dec 03 2003 - 22:59:05 EST
Eric Scace asked:
> At the risk of re-triggering yet another "what is a character"
> discussion... Have meteorological symbols been considered for
> incorporation in Unicode? (A search of the archives did not turn
> up any discussion.)
Not per se. And yes, this will trigger another "what is a character"
discussion, I fear.
>
> The set of symbols in use has been standardized for many decades
> by the World Meteorological Organization.
Can you point us to a specific document? http://www.wmo.ch lists
hundreds of publications, but nothing that I could see or search
for easily that points to a standard for meteorological symbols.
Also, you need to take into account that whatever the WMO may
state about this in a standard document may or may not reflect
computer practice reflected in fonts, other character encodings,
and actual practice around the world.
> The total set is
> around 150 characters.
^^^^^^^^^^
symbols
Unless the WMO has promulgated a *character* encoding standard
that we don't know about, the fact that there is a standard
list of some 150 images for symbols begs the question whether
these are characters or not. ISO has *many* standards for symbols
and icons of various sorts. They clearly do not all constitute
characters.
> However, some are already available in Unicode in various locations
> (arrows, simple thunderstorm symbol,
> lightning, and other glyphs which can be re-applied in their
> meteorological context such as various kinds of fog)... and some others
> can be decomposed in a manner similar to basic letters and
> diacritical marks.
Point the UTC to the set of 150 things standardized by the WMO,
and let the debate begin.
--Ken
>
> Thanks for your kind assistance.
>
> -- Eric Scace
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Dec 03 2003 - 23:52:37 EST