4 ms·
So why does Unicode Snowman exist? What language uses it?
by arohner 16y ago
So why does Unicode Snowman exist? What language uses it?
- m_myers 16y agoIt's in the Symbols & Dingbats subrange, along with the comet (☄), the cloud (☁), the umbrella (☂), the hot springs (♨), all the card suits, all the chess pieces (both white and black), a few musical notes, and various and sundry others. Open Character Map in Arial Unicode font and you can see for yourself. Not all Unicode symbols are meant for languages.
- alanh 16y agoI love Unicode (my license plate? 0x2764 ❤) and that these symbols exist, but get upset that they still don’t see a reason to add a padlock (or two, one open and one closed) or play/pause/ffwd/rev symbols.
- dkarl 16y agoI don't know, but it would sure make it easier to add a bare-bones media player widget or a weather report widget to a spartan desktop interface such as xmonad. Plus your widgets would be automatically restyled to be aesthetically consistent with the rest of the interface!
- Zaak 16y agoI'm holding out for Mr Potato Head combining characters.
- ugh 16y agoI have nothing but sympathy for the Unicode Consortium which finds itself in a difficult situation. The main purpose of Unicode is to contain all characters of all the world’s writing systems, not to be a directory of the world’s symbols. Yet there clearly are some symbols which absolutely have to be part of Unicode. Punctuation, for one. Where to draw the line? That’s not easy.
- thristian 16y ago> ...or play/pause/ffwd/rev symbols. I'm not sure about "pause", but Unicode has had U+25B6 BLACK RIGHT-POINTING TRIANGLE for "play" for some time, and Unicode 6.0 introduces U+23E9 BLACK RIGHT-POINTING DOUBLE TRIANGLE for "fast-forward" and U+23EA BLACK LEFT-POINTING DOUBLE TRIANGLE for "rewind".
- thecrusher 16y agoUnicode 6.0 has: 1F512 and 1F513 closed and open locks. Also 1F511 is a key, 1F510 is a key and lock, and 1F50F is a lock with ink pen(?). Unicode 6.0 also adds ffwd and rewind symbols but frustratingly leaves out pause and play. Plenty of triangles for play (which may or may not match the new additions). But two vertical lines or boxes are going to be very inconsistent from font to font in looking like a pause symbol. My biggest peeve? The standard power button symbol on every computer and almost everything else these days, the IEC 5009 standy icon, also recognized as the power symbol in IEEE 1621. You can approximate the IEC 5010 on/off button with some other things, but it won't reliably look the same, and won't look at all like the IEC 5009 icon. Pause, play, and power buttons are WAY WAY WAY more useful (i.e. necessary) in text than a nail polish icon.
- alanh 16y agoThanks for the info, and I cannot agree enough.
- jjcm 16y agoUnicode isn't strictly for language characters. It includes many other common symbols, borders, decorations, and other misc. See here for the full block that it resides in: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Unicode/Character_reference/2000-2FFF http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Unicode/Character_reference/200...