12 ms·
How did the Unicode Consortium turn around. I remember 10 years ago they were refusing to add standard media icons because >The scope of the Unicode Standard (
by tangus 10y ago
How did the Unicode Consortium turn around. I remember 10 years ago they were refusing to add standard media icons because
>The scope of the Unicode Standard (and ISO/IEC 10646) does
not extend to encoding every symbol or sign that bears
meaning in the world.
>This list has been round and round and round on this -- regular as clockwork, about once a year, the topic comes up again. And I see no indication that the UTC or WG2 are any closer to concluding that bunches of icons should start being included in the character encoding standards simply on the basis of their being widespread and recognizable icons.
>Where is the defensible line between "Fast Forward" and
"Women's Restroom" or "Right Lane Merge Ahead" or
"Danger Crocodiles No Swimming"?
(http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2005-m08/0371.html http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2005-m08/0371.h...)
Now it looks they add whatever somebody thinks of. I guess it's related to the liberation from the BMP.
- shakethemonkey 10y ago>The scope of the Unicode Standard (and ISO/IEC 10646) does not extend to encoding every symbol or sign that bears meaning in the world. Until Unicode has a half-star character, it won't even be able to encode the average newspaper.
- kens 10y agoSomebody should propose the half star (used in star ratings) to Unicode. Seriously.
- Bromskloss 10y agoAnd two thirds, and three fifths, …
- dagaci 10y agogood idea
- namaemuta 10y agoMultiply your rating system by 2 and you won't need half stars :)
- ape4 10y agoOnly the star with the left side filled in. And an outline on the right.
- agumonkey 10y agoThis is the role of digits I believe.
- nkrisc 10y agoWhat if my products are rated in smiley-faces?
- mjevans 10y agoI think something like an occlusion mask modifier (slice off this much from this side/corner) would be more useful.
- kens 10y agoUnicode is supposed to include symbols that appear in "running text", not standalone icons. So no on traffic signs for instance. (There are exceptions for historical reasons. And emoji are a totally separate story.)
- igravious 10y agoHow are traffic signs not in "running text" in books about the rules of the road and such like?
- Jaruzel 10y agoI'm not sure about the 'running text' thing, but in my view Traffic Signs are not globally universal (yet), so you'd have to have regional variants which is impractical.
- coldtea 10y agoTons of the things in unicode are not "globally universal".
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_on_Road_Signs_and_Signals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_on_Road_Sign...
- coldtea 10y agoRunning text means INSIDE text (as in: "running along" with the other characters), not "used in a book as illustration".
- acz 10y agoLet’s start working on "SVG over UTF" RFC, should we?
- gwbas1c 10y agoHonestly, I think "SVG over UTF" makes a lot more sense. It's impossible to make a character set that supports every character known to man, because that just adds undue effort on every computer maker, ect, to keep up. So why don't we pick a very good set: perhaps every letter in every language in common use for the past 200 years? Then, for the oddball symbols that someone wants to mix in text, there can be some kind of SVG-like convention. This allows publishing textual information without requiring that every device maker updates their device to support a 1-off symbol.
- halomru 10y agoBut if the shape of embedded in the text, font choice becomes meaningless. > undue effort on every computer maker, ect, to keep up. The effort to update the font files every few years? Unless you insist on supporting a new Unicode version the second it comes out, I don't see the big effort here? Of course there is effort for font makers, but this is quite centralised.
- datenwolf 10y ago> This allows publishing textual information without requiring that every device maker updates their device to support a 1-off symbol. The main purpose of Unicode is to encode the information. How the information is turned into its visual counterpart is outside the scope of unicode. For what it's worth this could be done by linking unicode code points to matching SVGs in a document. Wait, exactly that is already a W3C standard: https://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/fonts.html https://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/fonts.html
- bjourne 10y agoWhat about the oddest oddballs whose "symbols" are animations http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/tww.gif http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/tww.gif? They are used a lot on reddit sometimes even with sound.
- 10y ago