Re: Swastika to be banned by Microsoft?

From: Stefan Persson (alsjebegrijptwatikbedoel@yahoo.se)
Date: Sun Dec 14 2003 - 09:40:57 EST

  • Next message: Michael Everson: "Re: Swastika to be banned by Microsoft?"

    Philippe Verdy wrote:
    > I find nothnig wrong in proposing a font which does not have these symbols
    > for use in European scripts, where the occurence of the symbol is almost
    > always associated to the Nazi's party, but I think it would be wrong to
    > remove them from fonts designed for Asian markets that need it to represent
    > their script, in a context where such association is not self-evident.

    What about universal fonts such as Arial Unicode M$?

    > May be the Unicode name should not be swastika but a transliteration of an
    > Asian name (Tibetan, Chinese Pinyin...), and all references to "swastika"
    > (included in code charts, and the name index) removed if they ever occur
    > somewhere in the standard or in a proposal.

    Is the word "swastika" used at any other place in the standard apart
    from the UniHan database
    (http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=534d &
    http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=5350&useutf8=false

    > However there's still a problem with the ancient scandinavian usage: it's
    > not clear that the symbol would only fit in Asian fonts. However the symbols
    > could be present in fonts made to represent old European scripts such as
    > Runic, even if they have been used in translations to Roman-Latin or
    > Church-Latin of these texts, with a Latin or Gothic script, or even in some
    > other Uralic languages.

    Aren't the U+534D and U+5350 only defined for Asian usage, so that
    different code points (which seem not to be defined in the current
    version of the standard) have to be used for ancient European purpose?

    > which will be supported as well in
    > Windows by a corresponding Windows-125x codepage for Pan-Sahelian languages,

    Does M$ really define more Windows-125x code pages? I've got the
    impression that M$ is making all new versions of Windows Unicode-based,
    so that there won't be any Windows-125x code pages needed at all.

    Stefan

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