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We managed to get Power Symbols into Unicode (http://unicodepowersymbol.com/ http://unicodepowersymbol.com/) and it was all sparked by a conversation on HN http

• scrollaway 11y ago
  That's really awesome. Thanks a lot for this, that is actually a need I came across when working on some desktop environment features.
• Zikes 11y ago
  Does anyone know if there are plans to incorporate "powerline" symbols, a la https://github.com/powerline/powerline https://github.com/powerline/powerline? Or are those already Unicode compliant, and simply missing from most font libraries?
  • rspeer 11y ago
    Powerline symbols are private use codepoints. I think it might be better this way. You need a font that supports them anyway, and they're not intended to convey anything in the absence of such a font, so it doesn't matter that they're private use. If the symbols got official Unicode codepoints, switching to the official codepoints would break all existing Powerline-compatible fonts. And if something better than Powerline came along it would have to happen all over again.
    • Zikes 11y ago
      I understand that it would be backwards-incompatible, however it would be nice to make it official, considering it's been proven useful. It wouldn't break existing Powerline fonts, however, because those private-use codepoints would still work as long as they're not assigned to anything else.
      • rspeer 11y ago
        This is still exactly what the private use area is for: "I want a code that tells this particular font to show this particular symbol, and nobody will need to know what this code meant 20 years from now".