From: Mark E. Shoulson (mark@kli.org)
Date: Sun Dec 14 2003 - 10:28:28 EST
On 12/14/03 07:26, Michael Everson wrote:
> The following story was forwarded to me. The "offending" characters in
> question are, I take it, the left-facing and right-facing swastika
> symbols, often used in Tibetan, found among the Chinese ideographs at
> U+534D (yung-drung-chi-khor) and U+5350 (yung-drung-nang-khor).
>
> I hope that this story is not true.
>
> http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=582&e=1&u=/nm/20031212/wr_nm/tech_microsoft_swastika_dc
I also hope it isn't true.
I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I find myself thinking that the
swastika, THE Nazi swastika, right-facing, tilted 45°, proper ratio of
stroke-thickness, the whole deal, should be encoded in Unicode. As a
matter of history: it *is* a symbol of profound significance in the
history of the world. If we have U+262D HAMMER AND SICKLE and U+262E
PEACE SYMBOL and all the various crosses and crescents and whatnot, the
swastika should be there as well.
And me, an Orthodox Jew, whose extended family was decimated in the
Holocaust. Like I said, it's embarrassing.
In the meantime, I'm wondering if/when hate groups online will discover
U+5350 and if they'll use it (being, as it is, a product of another
culture). I did a Google search on it a few weeks ago and found no use
(yet) by such groups.
~mark
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Dec 14 2003 - 11:06:13 EST