5 ms·

One of looking at this is that European banners, coats of arms, etc, are traditionally defined in writing (often using a domain-specific language called a blazo

by addaon 3y ago

One of looking at this is that European banners, coats of arms, etc, are traditionally defined in writing (often using a domain-specific language called a blazon), and then compiled to a visual form by a banner maker. This compilation is intended to be reversible -- one goal is to be able to look up the written form in a book of heraldry based on the visual appearance -- but, just like compiling code, is not a one-to-one process; the same blazon can result in various visual representations, and which one is selected is often an aesthetic consideration. Not speaking Italian, and not having done the historical digging, I don't know the original written definition of the Vatican flag, but it looks like it's something like "banner divided in yellow (towards the flagpole) and white, with the white part centered with the crossed keys surmounted by the tiara," where the "crossed keys" and "tiara" are imports of external symbology. In this case, the question concerns the tiara [1] -- which, like most physical tiaras, has a hole running through it that appears neither red nor white when viewed as it is represented on the flag. While it is certainly reasonable for the Vatican to have preferences on the detailed representation of this flag, both as-drawn versions are faithful representations of the blazon, both allow looking up the blazon from the visual representation, and both are, frankly, fine. [1] https://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/documentazione/documents/sp_ss_scv/insigne/triregno_en.html https://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/documentazione/do...

melagonster 3y ago
wow, this is very interesting, I never heard to this before.
maratc 3y ago
While widely used symbols like “eagle displayed” or “lion passant guardant” are really well defined, the more you get to the esoteric stuff the more you find there are really no standards. Try “importing” such thing as “octopus proper”. Heraldically speaking, it really makes no difference, as nobody would mistake the “wrong” flag of Vatican to represent some completely different entity. But TLA is not implying that — just asking for some more standardization of a widely-used symbol.
- dehrmann 3y ago
  > nobody would mistake the “wrong” flag of Vatican to represent some completely different entity Compare that to Australia and New Zealand. If you don't know what do look for and aren't aware the other's out there, you could easily mix them up.
  - ytdytvhxgydvhh 3y ago
    NZ came pretty close to changing to an original flag but ended up sticking with that “we’re not Australia, really” flag: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015–2016_New_Zealand_flag_referendums https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015–2016_New_Zealand_flag_r...
    - lostlogin 3y ago
      That man’s vanity project and the shitty options on offer is what scuppered that, not the quality of the existing flag. I never thought an opportunity to show Laser Kiwi would come up here. https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/fire-lazar https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/fire-lazar
  - CoastalCoder 3y ago
    Playing "Legion TD2" had been great for my recognition of national flags. Every game I see up to 3 other flags for the other players, and the country name is shown on mouse-over. It even taught me of the existence a country I'd never heard of before.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> While it is certainly reasonable for the Vatican to have preferences on the detailed representation of this flag, both as-drawn versions are faithful representations of the blazon It obviously has an actual color (which might be red or white, but: (1) the tiara is not a unique physical object, there are multiple of them, and they may differ on this point, (2) weirdly, while there are lots of photographs, including of them in displays where that angle would be visible in person, I can’t find any actually photographed of any iterations showing the actual color, and (3) while stock art of coat of arms design (without the field) also has the red just as debated flag design does, the actual coat of arms does not specify red as a feature of the tiara and the red shown in the actual coat of arms there is the red of the field (which would not be visible if the field were a physical background and the tiara a physical object, but armorial designs aren’t constrained by physical representation.) So I suspect both the flag image in question and common stock art of the Vatican Coat of Arms design without the field are importing part of the field of the coat of arms (which is, explicitly, red [gules]) as if it were part of the tiara.
ttepasse 3y ago
Additional: Blazons mostly concern themselves with the distinguishing element, the coat of arms on the escutcheon, with the external devices described mostly by reference – the papal tiara, an Earl’s coronet, a naval crown, etc. Mostly because in the heraldry of a European country these coronets were somewhat standardised – “everybody” knows that a duke’s coronet has acanthus/strawberry leaves – and for well-known crowns of sovereigns like the St. Edwards/Tudor crown, the Crown of St. Stephen, the Holy Roman Emperors Crown and of course the Papal Tiara developed over time well known depictions after their real likeness. Pius XI didn’t bother to specify the tiara (the “triregnum”) in writing. > La bandiera della Città del Vaticano è costituita da due campi divisi verticalmente, uno giallo aderente all'asta e l'altro bianco, e porta in questo ultimo la tiara colle chiavi, il tutto come al modello, che forma l'allegato A alla presente legge. > Lo stemma è costituito dalla tiara colle chiavi, come al modello che forma l'allegato B alla presente legge. > Il sigillo porta nel centro la tiara colle chiavi ed intorno le parole « Stato della Città del Vaticano », come al modello che forma l'allegato C alla presente legge. Translated by Google: > The flag of the Vatican City is made up of two vertically divided fields, one yellow adhering to the hoist and the other white, and in the latter bears the tiara with the keys, all as in the model, which forms attachment A to this law. > The coat of arms consists of the tiara with the keys, as in the model which forms annex B to this law. > The seal bears in the center the tiara with the keys and around the words "State of the Vatican City", as in the model which forms annex C to the present law. From [1] – where the models in the annexes are printed in black and white. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20131217230421/http://www.uniroma2.it/didattica/Ecclesiastico/deposito/Leggi_Vaticane.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20131217230421/http://www.unirom... Getting pixel-perfect representations from textual descriptions seems like a fool’s errand. The original sin, of course, was depicting the coat of arms on the flag, although that seems to be long practice for the preceding flags of the Papal States and institutions, as seen in the linked digital book on Vatican Flags [2] in the article, which features a multitude of different ancient depictions of the flag, often displaying the Papal Tiara’s inner lining in … red. [2] https://nava.org/raven-volume-25 https://nava.org/raven-volume-25 (Edit: fixed quote formatting)
- fanf2 3y ago
  Link [1] does not work for me but this does https://web.archive.org/web/20131217230421fw_/http://www.uniroma2.it/didattica/Ecclesiastico/deposito/Leggi_Vaticane.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20131217230421fw_/http://www.uni... The illustration of the coat of arms is more helpful than it may appear, because it uses the heraldic conventions for indicating colours in engravings: the field (background) is gules (red), indicated by the vertical hatching; the keys are or (gold) and argent (silver) indicated by spotted hatching and plain white. The diagram indicates the lining of the tiara is argent, unlike the depiction of the arms on Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coats_of_arms_of_the_Holy_See_and_Vatican_City https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coats_of_arms_of_the_Holy_Se... In real life the lining of the tiara of Benedict XVI is white https://orbiscatholicussecundus.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-papal-tiara.html?m=1 https://orbiscatholicussecundus.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-pap...
Someone 3y ago
> but it looks like it's something like "banner divided in yellow (towards the flagpole) and white https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Vatican_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Vatican_City says “A vertical bicolour of gold and white”. I would have thought that should be gold and silver (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tincture_(heraldry) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tincture_(heraldry)), but (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tincture_(heraldry)#Other_tinctures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tincture_(heraldry)#Other_tinc...) “The heraldic scholar A. C. Fox-Davies proposed that, in some circumstances, white should be considered a heraldic colour, distinct from argent”, so who knows? Maybe it is gold and white. Edit: https://www.vaticanstate.va/it/stato-governo/note-generali/bandiera.html https://www.vaticanstate.va/it/stato-governo/note-generali/b... says “un drappo bipartito di giallo (verso l’asta) e di bianco”, so the Vatican itself says it’s yellow and white. (Interestingly, there’s a convention for converting those colors to monochrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tincture_(heraldry)#Monochromatic_presentation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tincture_(heraldry)#Monochroma...)
- addaon 3y ago
  > Maybe it is gold and white. Yeah. In general, the first rule of heraldry ("metal should not be placed upon metal, nor color upon color") trumps the convention of "use standard heraldric colors." Gold touching silver violates the first rule; gold touching white violates only convention.
  - bboygravity 3y ago
    k thanks, now I want to know what official flag breaks/broke the most of those rules and conventions :p
    - addaon 3y ago
      Eh, rules are meant to be broken. And keep in mind these are at best European rules -- and even then, certain areas (England!) took them more seriously than others. There's also a lot of rules lawyering possible. e.g. red doesn't touch black on the German flag, because that would violate the first rule; instead, the field (background) is half black and half gold (color touching metal, fine), and the red stripe is on top of this field, totally legal, wink wink. That said, trying to follow these rules has led to some strange decisions; e.g. it's interesting to look into (some unverified stories about) why the US flag has white (silver, metal) stripes on a red background, while the US seal has red stripes on a white background.
progbits 3y ago
Constitution of Nepal has precise drawing instructions for their flag. See page 221: https://ag.gov.np/files/Constitution-of-Nepal_2072_Eng_www.moljpa.gov_.npDate-72_11_16.pdf https://ag.gov.np/files/Constitution-of-Nepal_2072_Eng_www.m... Now of course you can't draw keys and tiara with Euclid-style instructions (in practice), but maybe countries should standardize their flag by publishing a canonical SVG file.
- terminalcommand 3y ago
  Turkish constitution defines Turkish flag in terms of geometry. The founder of our republic was a mathematics enthusiast. He also had a book on teaching geometry although his main profession was being a soldier.
- xxs 3y ago
  While the svg does have a standard rfc, imagine the rfc gets changed to invalidate the standard, and your flag is altered (or svg become incompatible). A technical drawing with ratios and CMY(K)/Pantone coloring would be a proper fit, though.
  - jhoechtl 3y ago
    In that case a binary representation as png could help out. I can't imagine any conceivable event that would both invalidate svg and png standards.

by addaon 3y ago

melagonster 3y ago

wow, this is very interesting, I never heard to this before.

maratc 3y ago

While widely used symbols like “eagle displayed” or “lion passant guardant” are really well defined, the more you get to the esoteric stuff the more you find there are really no standards. Try “importing” such thing as “octopus proper”. Heraldically speaking, it really makes no difference, as nobody would mistake the “wrong” flag of Vatican to represent some completely different entity. But TLA is not implying that — just asking for some more standardization of a widely-used symbol.

dehrmann 3y ago
> nobody would mistake the “wrong” flag of Vatican to represent some completely different entity Compare that to Australia and New Zealand. If you don't know what do look for and aren't aware the other's out there, you could easily mix them up.
- ytdytvhxgydvhh 3y ago
  NZ came pretty close to changing to an original flag but ended up sticking with that “we’re not Australia, really” flag: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015–2016_New_Zealand_flag_referendums https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015–2016_New_Zealand_flag_r...
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    That man’s vanity project and the shitty options on offer is what scuppered that, not the quality of the existing flag. I never thought an opportunity to show Laser Kiwi would come up here. https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/fire-lazar https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/fire-lazar
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
  Playing "Legion TD2" had been great for my recognition of national flags. Every game I see up to 3 other flags for the other players, and the country name is shown on mouse-over. It even taught me of the existence a country I'd never heard of before.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> While it is certainly reasonable for the Vatican to have preferences on the detailed representation of this flag, both as-drawn versions are faithful representations of the blazon It obviously has an actual color (which might be red or white, but: (1) the tiara is not a unique physical object, there are multiple of them, and they may differ on this point, (2) weirdly, while there are lots of photographs, including of them in displays where that angle would be visible in person, I can’t find any actually photographed of any iterations showing the actual color, and (3) while stock art of coat of arms design (without the field) also has the red just as debated flag design does, the actual coat of arms does not specify red as a feature of the tiara and the red shown in the actual coat of arms there is the red of the field (which would not be visible if the field were a physical background and the tiara a physical object, but armorial designs aren’t constrained by physical representation.) So I suspect both the flag image in question and common stock art of the Vatican Coat of Arms design without the field are importing part of the field of the coat of arms (which is, explicitly, red [gules]) as if it were part of the tiara.

ttepasse 3y ago

Additional: Blazons mostly concern themselves with the distinguishing element, the coat of arms on the escutcheon, with the external devices described mostly by reference – the papal tiara, an Earl’s coronet, a naval crown, etc. Mostly because in the heraldry of a European country these coronets were somewhat standardised – “everybody” knows that a duke’s coronet has acanthus/strawberry leaves – and for well-known crowns of sovereigns like the St. Edwards/Tudor crown, the Crown of St. Stephen, the Holy Roman Emperors Crown and of course the Papal Tiara developed over time well known depictions after their real likeness. Pius XI didn’t bother to specify the tiara (the “triregnum”) in writing. > La bandiera della Città del Vaticano è costituita da due campi divisi verticalmente, uno giallo aderente all'asta e l'altro bianco, e porta in questo ultimo la tiara colle chiavi, il tutto come al modello, che forma l'allegato A alla presente legge. > Lo stemma è costituito dalla tiara colle chiavi, come al modello che forma l'allegato B alla presente legge. > Il sigillo porta nel centro la tiara colle chiavi ed intorno le parole « Stato della Città del Vaticano », come al modello che forma l'allegato C alla presente legge. Translated by Google: > The flag of the Vatican City is made up of two vertically divided fields, one yellow adhering to the hoist and the other white, and in the latter bears the tiara with the keys, all as in the model, which forms attachment A to this law. > The coat of arms consists of the tiara with the keys, as in the model which forms annex B to this law. > The seal bears in the center the tiara with the keys and around the words "State of the Vatican City", as in the model which forms annex C to the present law. From [1] – where the models in the annexes are printed in black and white. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20131217230421/http://www.uniroma2.it/didattica/Ecclesiastico/deposito/Leggi_Vaticane.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20131217230421/http://www.unirom... Getting pixel-perfect representations from textual descriptions seems like a fool’s errand. The original sin, of course, was depicting the coat of arms on the flag, although that seems to be long practice for the preceding flags of the Papal States and institutions, as seen in the linked digital book on Vatican Flags [2] in the article, which features a multitude of different ancient depictions of the flag, often displaying the Papal Tiara’s inner lining in … red. [2] https://nava.org/raven-volume-25 https://nava.org/raven-volume-25 (Edit: fixed quote formatting)

fanf2 3y ago
Link [1] does not work for me but this does https://web.archive.org/web/20131217230421fw_/http://www.uniroma2.it/didattica/Ecclesiastico/deposito/Leggi_Vaticane.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20131217230421fw_/http://www.uni... The illustration of the coat of arms is more helpful than it may appear, because it uses the heraldic conventions for indicating colours in engravings: the field (background) is gules (red), indicated by the vertical hatching; the keys are or (gold) and argent (silver) indicated by spotted hatching and plain white. The diagram indicates the lining of the tiara is argent, unlike the depiction of the arms on Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coats_of_arms_of_the_Holy_See_and_Vatican_City https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coats_of_arms_of_the_Holy_Se... In real life the lining of the tiara of Benedict XVI is white https://orbiscatholicussecundus.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-papal-tiara.html?m=1 https://orbiscatholicussecundus.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-pap...

Someone 3y ago

> but it looks like it's something like "banner divided in yellow (towards the flagpole) and white https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Vatican_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Vatican_City says “A vertical bicolour of gold and white”. I would have thought that should be gold and silver (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tincture_(heraldry) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tincture_(heraldry)), but (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tincture_(heraldry)#Other_tinctures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tincture_(heraldry)#Other_tinc...) “The heraldic scholar A. C. Fox-Davies proposed that, in some circumstances, white should be considered a heraldic colour, distinct from argent”, so who knows? Maybe it is gold and white. Edit: https://www.vaticanstate.va/it/stato-governo/note-generali/bandiera.html https://www.vaticanstate.va/it/stato-governo/note-generali/b... says “un drappo bipartito di giallo (verso l’asta) e di bianco”, so the Vatican itself says it’s yellow and white. (Interestingly, there’s a convention for converting those colors to monochrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tincture_(heraldry)#Monochromatic_presentation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tincture_(heraldry)#Monochroma...)

addaon 3y ago
> Maybe it is gold and white. Yeah. In general, the first rule of heraldry ("metal should not be placed upon metal, nor color upon color") trumps the convention of "use standard heraldric colors." Gold touching silver violates the first rule; gold touching white violates only convention.
- bboygravity 3y ago
  k thanks, now I want to know what official flag breaks/broke the most of those rules and conventions :p
  - addaon 3y ago
    Eh, rules are meant to be broken. And keep in mind these are at best European rules -- and even then, certain areas (England!) took them more seriously than others. There's also a lot of rules lawyering possible. e.g. red doesn't touch black on the German flag, because that would violate the first rule; instead, the field (background) is half black and half gold (color touching metal, fine), and the red stripe is on top of this field, totally legal, wink wink. That said, trying to follow these rules has led to some strange decisions; e.g. it's interesting to look into (some unverified stories about) why the US flag has white (silver, metal) stripes on a red background, while the US seal has red stripes on a white background.

progbits 3y ago

Constitution of Nepal has precise drawing instructions for their flag. See page 221: https://ag.gov.np/files/Constitution-of-Nepal_2072_Eng_www.moljpa.gov_.npDate-72_11_16.pdf https://ag.gov.np/files/Constitution-of-Nepal_2072_Eng_www.m... Now of course you can't draw keys and tiara with Euclid-style instructions (in practice), but maybe countries should standardize their flag by publishing a canonical SVG file.

terminalcommand 3y ago
Turkish constitution defines Turkish flag in terms of geometry. The founder of our republic was a mathematics enthusiast. He also had a book on teaching geometry although his main profession was being a soldier.
xxs 3y ago
While the svg does have a standard rfc, imagine the rfc gets changed to invalidate the standard, and your flag is altered (or svg become incompatible). A technical drawing with ratios and CMY(K)/Pantone coloring would be a proper fit, though.
- jhoechtl 3y ago
  In that case a binary representation as png could help out. I can't imagine any conceivable event that would both invalidate svg and png standards.