8 ms·

The success of the unicodepowersymbol proposal inspired me to suggest a couple characters to Unicode (the Bitcoin sign and IBM's group mark from 1960s mainfram

by kens 10y ago

The success of the unicodepowersymbol proposal inspired me to suggest a couple characters to Unicode (the Bitcoin sign and IBM's group mark from 1960s mainframes, which were accepted). The point is that Unicode really is open to proposals from random people; you don't need to part of a big company to influence Unicode.

PhasmaFelis 10y ago
It's really cool than these things can happen. Still, I can't help but feel like, in a couple of centuries, Unicode is gonna be a goddamn mess.
- akiselev 10y ago
  What isn't a huge goddamn mess after several centuries? If there's one thing we humans don't deal with well, it's entropy.
  - js8 10y ago
    Actually, humans, just like any other living organism, deal with entropy quite well - they dump it onto others. :-)
    - copperx 10y ago
      Onto the next generation :/
  - 1024core 10y ago
    The Pantheon in Rome.
- ygra 10y ago
  Heck, Unicode is a mess already. But that's mostly because (a) language and scripts are messy, and (b) the original aim was to unify and encompass all existing character sets, and some of those were messy as well. While there was considerable uproar over Emoji and there still often is over yet another fifteen symbols that everyone thinks no one would ever need or use, the bulk of the Unicode character set is still scripts for human languages. And some of those are only relevant for a very small minority, say, archaeologists. But that's fine. There's enough space, we're nowhere near to running out and Unicode enabled all sorts of cool things in computing that simply were not possible before or only with awful hacks and workarounds.
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    > Unicode enabled all sorts of cool things in computing that simply were not possible before or only with awful hacks and workarounds. Could you give an example? I don't know anything about this stuff.
    - dalke 10y ago
      Conversion between different character codes became much easier. (Å (U+00C5) is canonically the same as Å (U+212B) but the latter exist only for round-trip compatibility.) Unicode defines normalization algorithms (is é its own character, or e with a modifier character?). I can have a document which combines English, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese, and expect it to be readable and editable by many different tools.
      - vorg 10y ago
        > I can have a document which combines English, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese English combines with top-down Chinese, and English combines with right-to-left Arabic, but top-down Chinese and right-to-left Arabic don't combine properly in the same document using Unicode -- the Arabic will be written bottom-up instead of top-down when embedded in the top-down Chinese.
        dalke 10y ago
        Layout is indeed hard. I meant something simpler, like: The word 'computer' in English is 计算者 [jì suàn zhě] in Chinese, Компьютер in Russian, and حاسوب in Arabic." Try that without Unicode. It's of course possible with TeX, and no doubt other solutions. Which is why I added "and expect it to be readable and editable by many different tools". (As a real-world use case, look at Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" and see how he credits people using their full names, in their own written language.)
        Tyr42 10y ago
        Do you know when you would use 计算着 over 电脑[dian nao]? 计算着 I guess more literally translates to "one who computes", whereas 电脑 translates to "electric brain" which is a way more fun image, but I have no idea how the usage varies.
kristianp 10y ago
What's the IBM group symbol? I can't find the words IBM in [1]. [1] http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2B00.pdf http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2B00.pdf
- kens 10y ago
  The group mark will be U+2BD2. For details see https://github.com/shirriff/groupmark https://github.com/shirriff/groupmark
- ktsmith 10y ago
  You can find it here where it says it's in Stage 6 which I would imagine why it's not in the current chart: http://unicode.org/alloc/Pipeline.html http://unicode.org/alloc/Pipeline.html 2BD2 GROUP MARK 2015-May-05 Accepted 2016-May-29 Stage 6 The bitcoin symbol is in there too.
rbanffy 10y ago
Just added the group mark (and these power symbols) to https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font/tree/develop https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font/tree/develop. It was fun. Thanks for giving me an excuse. http://imgur.com/Sx0lkM8 http://imgur.com/Sx0lkM8
- rbanffy 10y ago
  https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font/releases/tag/v1.2.15 https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font/releases/tag/v1.2.15 A bit early.
hypertexthero 10y ago
Agreed. Although I had never worked with the Unicode Consortium, I [submitted a proposal][1] for an international symbol for an observer and it was eventually accepted. [1]: http://hypertexthero.com/logbook/2015/01/international-symbol-observer/ http://hypertexthero.com/logbook/2015/01/international-symbo...
- leoc 10y ago
  Ooh. One reason that's nice is because it adds one of the Smalltalk-72 symbols ( http://www.esug.org/data/HistoricalDocuments/Smalltalk72/Smalltalk72Manual.pdf http://www.esug.org/data/HistoricalDocuments/Smalltalk72/Sma... , see p. 16) that was missing from Unicode.
MichaelGG 10y ago
You don't need to be part of a big company, but it certainly helps. Especially if you want to stop a pentathalon or rifle character. (Top result: http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/rifle-emoji-dropped-unicode-9-0-update-apple-microsoft-1.3645884 http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/rifle-emoji-dropped-unicode-...)
- jshevek 10y ago
  That's a shame. Its one thing to have absolute, iron fisted control over your own platform - its another to intentionally seek to limit people's self expression on other platforms by influencing the standard in this way.
  - eridius 10y ago
    Are you saying that a company with voting rights shouldn't be allowed to have influence on what goes into Unicode? That doesn't make any sense. Also, if you read the article, Apple wasn't the only party in favor of nixing the emoji.
    - jshevek 10y ago
      > Are you saying that a company with voting rights shouldn't be allowed to have influence on what goes into Unicode? Obviously not.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      You can think a company should have a say and still think it's windy to use that say in a particular way.
    - zeveb 10y ago
      > Are you saying that a company with voting rights shouldn't be allowed to have influence on what goes into Unicode? One might have a right to do something and yet be wrong to do it. Apple had every right to do what they did, but they were completely, totally and undeniably in the wrong to do it. Everyone associated with their action should be ashamed. Honestly, they should all resign: their behaviour demonstrates that they have no business being associated with this sort of work.
intopieces 10y ago
You don't even need to be part of a big company to go to their meetings. I went to their conference in San Jose just to see the proposal for the Chinese Take-out box/chopsticks/fortune cook emojis. I met a ton of nice people, too.
paxcoder 10y ago
The company logo? Why? Would you please get the copyleft glyph in it? Seems more important.

by kens 10y ago

PhasmaFelis 10y ago

It's really cool than these things can happen. Still, I can't help but feel like, in a couple of centuries, Unicode is gonna be a goddamn mess.

akiselev 10y ago
What isn't a huge goddamn mess after several centuries? If there's one thing we humans don't deal with well, it's entropy.
- js8 10y ago
  Actually, humans, just like any other living organism, deal with entropy quite well - they dump it onto others. :-)
  - copperx 10y ago
    Onto the next generation :/
- 1024core 10y ago
  The Pantheon in Rome.
ygra 10y ago
Heck, Unicode is a mess already. But that's mostly because (a) language and scripts are messy, and (b) the original aim was to unify and encompass all existing character sets, and some of those were messy as well. While there was considerable uproar over Emoji and there still often is over yet another fifteen symbols that everyone thinks no one would ever need or use, the bulk of the Unicode character set is still scripts for human languages. And some of those are only relevant for a very small minority, say, archaeologists. But that's fine. There's enough space, we're nowhere near to running out and Unicode enabled all sorts of cool things in computing that simply were not possible before or only with awful hacks and workarounds.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  > Unicode enabled all sorts of cool things in computing that simply were not possible before or only with awful hacks and workarounds. Could you give an example? I don't know anything about this stuff.
  - dalke 10y ago
    Conversion between different character codes became much easier. (Å (U+00C5) is canonically the same as Å (U+212B) but the latter exist only for round-trip compatibility.) Unicode defines normalization algorithms (is é its own character, or e with a modifier character?). I can have a document which combines English, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese, and expect it to be readable and editable by many different tools.
    - vorg 10y ago
      > I can have a document which combines English, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese English combines with top-down Chinese, and English combines with right-to-left Arabic, but top-down Chinese and right-to-left Arabic don't combine properly in the same document using Unicode -- the Arabic will be written bottom-up instead of top-down when embedded in the top-down Chinese.
      - dalke 10y ago
        Layout is indeed hard. I meant something simpler, like: The word 'computer' in English is 计算者 [jì suàn zhě] in Chinese, Компьютер in Russian, and حاسوب in Arabic." Try that without Unicode. It's of course possible with TeX, and no doubt other solutions. Which is why I added "and expect it to be readable and editable by many different tools". (As a real-world use case, look at Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" and see how he credits people using their full names, in their own written language.)
        Tyr42 10y ago
        Do you know when you would use 计算着 over 电脑[dian nao]? 计算着 I guess more literally translates to "one who computes", whereas 电脑 translates to "electric brain" which is a way more fun image, but I have no idea how the usage varies.

kristianp 10y ago

What's the IBM group symbol? I can't find the words IBM in [1]. [1] http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2B00.pdf http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2B00.pdf

kens 10y ago
The group mark will be U+2BD2. For details see https://github.com/shirriff/groupmark https://github.com/shirriff/groupmark
ktsmith 10y ago
You can find it here where it says it's in Stage 6 which I would imagine why it's not in the current chart: http://unicode.org/alloc/Pipeline.html http://unicode.org/alloc/Pipeline.html 2BD2 GROUP MARK 2015-May-05 Accepted 2016-May-29 Stage 6 The bitcoin symbol is in there too.

rbanffy 10y ago

Just added the group mark (and these power symbols) to https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font/tree/develop https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font/tree/develop. It was fun. Thanks for giving me an excuse. http://imgur.com/Sx0lkM8 http://imgur.com/Sx0lkM8

rbanffy 10y ago
https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font/releases/tag/v1.2.15 https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font/releases/tag/v1.2.15 A bit early.

hypertexthero 10y ago

Agreed. Although I had never worked with the Unicode Consortium, I [submitted a proposal][1] for an international symbol for an observer and it was eventually accepted. [1]: http://hypertexthero.com/logbook/2015/01/international-symbol-observer/ http://hypertexthero.com/logbook/2015/01/international-symbo...

leoc 10y ago
Ooh. One reason that's nice is because it adds one of the Smalltalk-72 symbols ( http://www.esug.org/data/HistoricalDocuments/Smalltalk72/Smalltalk72Manual.pdf http://www.esug.org/data/HistoricalDocuments/Smalltalk72/Sma... , see p. 16) that was missing from Unicode.

MichaelGG 10y ago

You don't need to be part of a big company, but it certainly helps. Especially if you want to stop a pentathalon or rifle character. (Top result: http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/rifle-emoji-dropped-unicode-9-0-update-apple-microsoft-1.3645884 http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/rifle-emoji-dropped-unicode-...)

jshevek 10y ago
That's a shame. Its one thing to have absolute, iron fisted control over your own platform - its another to intentionally seek to limit people's self expression on other platforms by influencing the standard in this way.
- eridius 10y ago
  Are you saying that a company with voting rights shouldn't be allowed to have influence on what goes into Unicode? That doesn't make any sense. Also, if you read the article, Apple wasn't the only party in favor of nixing the emoji.
  - jshevek 10y ago
    > Are you saying that a company with voting rights shouldn't be allowed to have influence on what goes into Unicode? Obviously not.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    You can think a company should have a say and still think it's windy to use that say in a particular way.
  - zeveb 10y ago
    > Are you saying that a company with voting rights shouldn't be allowed to have influence on what goes into Unicode? One might have a right to do something and yet be wrong to do it. Apple had every right to do what they did, but they were completely, totally and undeniably in the wrong to do it. Everyone associated with their action should be ashamed. Honestly, they should all resign: their behaviour demonstrates that they have no business being associated with this sort of work.

intopieces 10y ago

You don't even need to be part of a big company to go to their meetings. I went to their conference in San Jose just to see the proposal for the Chinese Take-out box/chopsticks/fortune cook emojis. I met a ton of nice people, too.

paxcoder 10y ago

The company logo? Why? Would you please get the copyleft glyph in it? Seems more important.