4 ms·

Naive Danish speaker here. It is really jarring to look at, and is completely indistinguishable from ø. It is not that I cannot infer its meaning from the conte

Naive Danish speaker here. It is really jarring to look at, and is completely indistinguishable from ø. It is not that I cannot infer its meaning from the context, but it just stands out as a typo on first look and is really distracting. It surely would prevent me from using the font.

kazinator 8y ago
Good thing Danish doesn't have A through F, or you wouldn't be able to stomach hexadecimal.] Likewise with O; the commonplace zero with no slash would likely look like a jarring typo also, if Danish had that letter.
- ulrikrasmussen 8y ago
  Not the same thing; A-F are expected in hexadecimal and thus don't look out of place. I don't understand what you mean with O, font designers usually make sure that there are visual cues specifically to make it easy to distinguish those two glyphs.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  > Good thing Danish doesn't have A through F, or you wouldn't be able to stomach hexadecimal.] Hexadecimal requires being able to identify 'A', 'B' etc. as 'A', 'B' etc. It happens that they're assigned a different value/function then for their alphabetic use. The point is that there isn't another numerical symbol that is easily confusable with 'A'. (Of course there's l33t '4', but the two symbols are pretty distinct in most typefaces.) tldr; Being able to be used to represent a numeric value isn't the same thing as being easily confused for a different symbol, with a different value that also represents a numeric value.
  - kazinator 8y ago
    I don't agree; hexadecimal requires being able to identify A as the tenth element of the sequence of the natural numbers. Normally, the numeric symbolism that is attached to A is the concept of primality, firstness, not tenth-ness. Consider: "Grade A", "A-1 Contracting Co.", "Type 'A' personality", "AAA stock"... A is not just being the usual A in hexadecimal.
    - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
      Of course, but I'm assuming anyone using hexadecimal understands what the glyphs represent when they're used as part of a hexadecimal number representation. But the issue under discussion is being able to just do basic discrimination between characters – a necessary first step before associating them with their relevant value (e.g. as the tenth element of the sequence of natural numbers). So the issue with say, ∅ vs Ø,ø (where the first is a 'slashed zero' and the second two are the Scandinavian letter glyphs, is not (in)ability to assign the correct value in the given context (e.g. alphabetic vs hexadecimal) but in being able to discriminate which symbol it is to begin with.
      - kazinator 8y ago
        Now you're talking about Unicode issues, basically. "zero" and "oh" are in fact the same symbol, just like A is the first letter of the Roman alphabet, and the number ten in hex, and just like a slashed circle is the empty set, the Scandinavian letter, or the slashed zero in computing. In Unicode, we have multiple versions of some symbols which are dedicated those specific uses; there is a dedicated empty set, dedicated Scandinavian Ø and so on. ASCII already splits the O symbol into a dedicated 0 digit and O letter. Those being different codes allows font designers to play games with styling them differently. OP doesn't like the fact that in some fonts, the slashed computing zero has a stroke that extends past the boundaries, because then they experience an Ø (zero) vs Ø (letter) crisis. I say, it's exactly the same crisis as O (zero) vs O (letter); just suck it up like the rest of the world. OP claims that it's "no longer a zero"; but according to whom? There is no standard that the slashed zero of computing must not have a slash which extends outside of the oval. the slashed zero is an ad hoc concoction in computing that fontographers style in their own way. The font I'm typing in now renders ASCII zero as having a dot in the middle. Maybe there is a script somewhere in the world where that looks like a letter; oops! I agree there could be such a rule; whether a stroke touches or crosses another one is significant. These are totally different characters, after all: 由, 田. In western writing, we don't fuss quite that much. For instance the horizontal stroke of A sometimes extends outside of the frame. The top may be squared off or round.
        8y ago

kazinator 8y ago

Good thing Danish doesn't have A through F, or you wouldn't be able to stomach hexadecimal.] Likewise with O; the commonplace zero with no slash would likely look like a jarring typo also, if Danish had that letter.

ulrikrasmussen 8y ago
Not the same thing; A-F are expected in hexadecimal and thus don't look out of place. I don't understand what you mean with O, font designers usually make sure that there are visual cues specifically to make it easy to distinguish those two glyphs.
_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
> Good thing Danish doesn't have A through F, or you wouldn't be able to stomach hexadecimal.] Hexadecimal requires being able to identify 'A', 'B' etc. as 'A', 'B' etc. It happens that they're assigned a different value/function then for their alphabetic use. The point is that there isn't another numerical symbol that is easily confusable with 'A'. (Of course there's l33t '4', but the two symbols are pretty distinct in most typefaces.) tldr; Being able to be used to represent a numeric value isn't the same thing as being easily confused for a different symbol, with a different value that also represents a numeric value.
- kazinator 8y ago
  I don't agree; hexadecimal requires being able to identify A as the tenth element of the sequence of the natural numbers. Normally, the numeric symbolism that is attached to A is the concept of primality, firstness, not tenth-ness. Consider: "Grade A", "A-1 Contracting Co.", "Type 'A' personality", "AAA stock"... A is not just being the usual A in hexadecimal.
  - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    Of course, but I'm assuming anyone using hexadecimal understands what the glyphs represent when they're used as part of a hexadecimal number representation. But the issue under discussion is being able to just do basic discrimination between characters – a necessary first step before associating them with their relevant value (e.g. as the tenth element of the sequence of natural numbers). So the issue with say, ∅ vs Ø,ø (where the first is a 'slashed zero' and the second two are the Scandinavian letter glyphs, is not (in)ability to assign the correct value in the given context (e.g. alphabetic vs hexadecimal) but in being able to discriminate which symbol it is to begin with.
    - kazinator 8y ago
      Now you're talking about Unicode issues, basically. "zero" and "oh" are in fact the same symbol, just like A is the first letter of the Roman alphabet, and the number ten in hex, and just like a slashed circle is the empty set, the Scandinavian letter, or the slashed zero in computing. In Unicode, we have multiple versions of some symbols which are dedicated those specific uses; there is a dedicated empty set, dedicated Scandinavian Ø and so on. ASCII already splits the O symbol into a dedicated 0 digit and O letter. Those being different codes allows font designers to play games with styling them differently. OP doesn't like the fact that in some fonts, the slashed computing zero has a stroke that extends past the boundaries, because then they experience an Ø (zero) vs Ø (letter) crisis. I say, it's exactly the same crisis as O (zero) vs O (letter); just suck it up like the rest of the world. OP claims that it's "no longer a zero"; but according to whom? There is no standard that the slashed zero of computing must not have a slash which extends outside of the oval. the slashed zero is an ad hoc concoction in computing that fontographers style in their own way. The font I'm typing in now renders ASCII zero as having a dot in the middle. Maybe there is a script somewhere in the world where that looks like a letter; oops! I agree there could be such a rule; whether a stroke touches or crosses another one is significant. These are totally different characters, after all: 由, 田. In western writing, we don't fuss quite that much. For instance the horizontal stroke of A sometimes extends outside of the frame. The top may be squared off or round.
      - 8y ago