3 ms·

Having dabbled with the ARIB subtitling and data submission formats a bit myself, I can't help but think, who thought that it'd be a good idea to embed those sy

Having dabbled with the ARIB subtitling and data submission formats a bit myself, I can't help but think, who thought that it'd be a good idea to embed those symbols to the character encoding? Surely there's a room for a higher-level structured language that has tags, escape codes or some other markup, and allows for extensibility and ease of use. Keep the concerns separate!

kalleboo 10y ago
In the Japanese TV broadcast standard, subtitles can embed bitmap versions of kanji (generally only used for rare names or icons like "phone ringing"), but due to bandwidth and TV hardware cost limitations they're very low-res, whereas the encoded characters can be replaced by the TV with built-in high-res fonts. Perhaps a protocol designed in 2016 would use vectors instead. IIRC DVDs use 2-bit bitmap overlays, which is why DVD ripping software has to use OCR to get softsubs.
- gizmo686 10y ago
  That still doesn't answer why these particular characters needed their own character. For instance, 🈯 U+1F22F [0] is really just a stylized version of 指 U+6307 [1] [2]. On a likely related note, the Enclosed Ideographic Supplement [3] seems simmilarly redundent, being composed of characters such as 🈯 which, again, should be a modification of of the basic 指 character. It is not like Unicode does not support modifying characters. EDIT: not "likely related" the emoji character described in the article is just 🈯. This character is called called "Squared Cjk Unified Ideograph-6307". [0] http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#1f22f http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#1f22f [1] https://unicode-table.com/en/6307/ https://unicode-table.com/en/6307/ [2] Insert rant about Han unification [3] https://unicode-table.com/en/blocks/enclosed-ideographic-supplement/ https://unicode-table.com/en/blocks/enclosed-ideographic-sup...
  - cooper12 10y ago
    My guess would be because of semantics. The plain version is the character itself used in text. The squared version is a specific symbol used in television for "designated hitter". It's the same reason that there are unicode characters that looks exactly like latin characters, except they're in different unicode blocks. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoglyph#Unicode_homoglyphs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoglyph#Unicode_homoglyphs)
    - Symbiote 10y ago
      It will be for compatibility with those old encodings. Otherwise, these two codepoints should be used: U+6307 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-6307 U+20DE COMBINING ENCLOSING SQUARE To give this: 指⃞ That can work on any character, and there are other enclosing options: X⃝ circle X⃞ square X⃟ diamond X⃠ backslash circle X⃢ screen X⃣ keycap X⃤ triangle So we can make an escape key: ␛⃣ U+241B SYMBOL FOR ESCAPE; U+20E3 COMBINING ENCLOSING KEYCAP

kalleboo 10y ago

In the Japanese TV broadcast standard, subtitles can embed bitmap versions of kanji (generally only used for rare names or icons like "phone ringing"), but due to bandwidth and TV hardware cost limitations they're very low-res, whereas the encoded characters can be replaced by the TV with built-in high-res fonts. Perhaps a protocol designed in 2016 would use vectors instead. IIRC DVDs use 2-bit bitmap overlays, which is why DVD ripping software has to use OCR to get softsubs.

gizmo686 10y ago
That still doesn't answer why these particular characters needed their own character. For instance, 🈯 U+1F22F [0] is really just a stylized version of 指 U+6307 [1] [2]. On a likely related note, the Enclosed Ideographic Supplement [3] seems simmilarly redundent, being composed of characters such as 🈯 which, again, should be a modification of of the basic 指 character. It is not like Unicode does not support modifying characters. EDIT: not "likely related" the emoji character described in the article is just 🈯. This character is called called "Squared Cjk Unified Ideograph-6307". [0] http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#1f22f http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html#1f22f [1] https://unicode-table.com/en/6307/ https://unicode-table.com/en/6307/ [2] Insert rant about Han unification [3] https://unicode-table.com/en/blocks/enclosed-ideographic-supplement/ https://unicode-table.com/en/blocks/enclosed-ideographic-sup...
- cooper12 10y ago
  My guess would be because of semantics. The plain version is the character itself used in text. The squared version is a specific symbol used in television for "designated hitter". It's the same reason that there are unicode characters that looks exactly like latin characters, except they're in different unicode blocks. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoglyph#Unicode_homoglyphs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoglyph#Unicode_homoglyphs)
  - Symbiote 10y ago
    It will be for compatibility with those old encodings. Otherwise, these two codepoints should be used: U+6307 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-6307 U+20DE COMBINING ENCLOSING SQUARE To give this: 指⃞ That can work on any character, and there are other enclosing options: X⃝ circle X⃞ square X⃟ diamond X⃠ backslash circle X⃢ screen X⃣ keycap X⃤ triangle So we can make an escape key: ␛⃣ U+241B SYMBOL FOR ESCAPE; U+20E3 COMBINING ENCLOSING KEYCAP