Re: Draft 3 of the proposal to encode an EXTERNAL LINK SIGN in the BMP

From: Doug Ewell (dewell@adelphia.net)
Date: Thu Aug 10 2006 - 20:47:54 CDT

  • Next message: Andrew West: "Re: Draft 3 of the proposal to encode an EXTERNAL LINK SIGN in the BMP"

    Andrew West <andrewcwest at gmail dot com> wrote:

    >> Sure. It's all over the place. But is it a character?
    >
    > Not yet.

    That's not my criterion. As paradoxical as it may sound, an entity can
    qualify as a "character" according to the Character-Glyph Model without
    having been encoded (yet) in the Universal Character Set.

    > But I personally think that the open/closed padlock symbols have as
    > much right to be encoded as characters as any of the other members of
    > the elite Miscellaneous Symbols block.

    Some are worse than others: what is the case for encoding all 27 of the
    symbols in the range U+2731 through U+274B? (Besides the laser printer,
    I mean.)

    > But, on the other hand, as Jukka and others have/will point out, most
    > web designers will still use an image in preference to a coded
    > character even if such symbols are encoded, because of limited font
    > coverage; so some would argue that there is not much utility in
    > encoding web symbols. I disagree, but can't think of a good
    > counter-argument.

    That's true for almost all newly encoded characters. It'll be a while
    before you can assume most users have a font that supports N'Ko or
    Phags-Pa.

    --
    Doug Ewell
    Fullerton, California, USA
    http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
    


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