4 ms·
>Should GUI icons, widgets and controls be covered by Unicode? That is a can of worms They already got all the Wingdings symbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
by benibela 7y ago
>Should GUI icons, widgets and controls be covered by Unicode? That is a can of worms
They already got all the Wingdings symbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingdings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingdings
- goto11 7y agoYeah because Wingdings was a preexisting character set and Unicode was designed to be a superset of all existing character sets in use.
- ken 7y agoThus the inherent contradiction: Unicode is for text, it must include all existing character sets which it aims to unify, and previous character sets weren’t only used for text. The obvious hack is to make a custom character set called “Rejected by Unicode”.
- goto11 7y agoIt would probably be easier just to design a png or svg icon for the UI widgets you need. Then you don't have to lobby a consortium and wait for them to accept your icon.
- rini17 7y agoTo offload the design to the font foundry is even easier :)
- ori_b 7y agoThe goal was to eliminate "we can't switch to Unicode, it doesn't have ® symbols" objections.
- yissp 7y agoUnicode Russell's paradox
- LudwigNagasena 7y agoIsn’t Wingdings just a font that can work with whatever character set?
- goto11 7y agoYeah, it was basically a hack to extend the character repertoire in the time of 8-bit character sets. The kind of shenanigans Unicode was designed to replace. You still see this kind of mischief when Outlook users type a smiley, and it is rendered as a "J" with the wingdings font. Readers of the mail where styling is stripped or who haven't the font installed just sees a confusing "J".