4 ms·

And why can't the symbol be a regular old uppercase "K"? Who is this helping?

bee_rider 10mo ago
I think just using uppercase Latin K is the recommendation. But, I dunno. Why would anybody apply upper or lower case operators to a temperature measurement? It just seems like a nonsense thing to do.
- zygentoma 10mo ago
  Maybe not for text to be read again, but might be sensible e.g. for slug or file name generation and the like...
  - bee_rider 10mo ago
    That’s an interesting thought. IMO this is somewhere where if we were really doing something, we might as well go all the way and double check the relevant standards, right? The filesystem should accept some character set for use as names, and if we’re generating a name inside our program we should definitely find a character set that fits inside what the filesystem expects and that captures what we want to express… my gut says upper case Latin K would be the best pick if we needed to most portably represent Kelvin in a filename on a reasonably modern, consumer filesystem.
- Eisenstein 10mo ago
  I wonder if you can register a domain with it in the name.
infogulch 10mo ago
Unicode wants to be able to preserve round-trip re-encoding from this other standard which has separate letter-K and degree-K characters. Making these small sacrifices for compatibility is how Unicode became the defacto world standard.
- shiomiru 10mo ago
  The "other standard" in this case being IBM-944. (At least looking at https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode1.0.0/ch06.pdf https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode1.0.0/ch06.pdf p. 574 (=110 in the PDF) I only see a mapping from U+212A to that one.)
  - infogulch 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - shiomiru 10mo ago
      That "deeper explanation" seems incorrect, considering that the KSC column is empty in the mapping linked above.
  - kahirsch 10mo ago
    The ICU mappings files have entries for U212A in the following files: gb18030.ucm ibm-1364_P110-2007.ucm ibm-1390_P110-2003.ucm ibm-1399_P110-2003.ucm ibm-16684_P110-2003.ucm ibm-933_P110-1995.ucm ibm-949_P110-1999.ucm ibm-949_P11A-1999.ucm
ahoka 10mo ago
Probably useful in a non-latin codeset?
UltraSane 10mo ago
having a dedicated Kelvin symbol preserves the semantics.
oneshtein 10mo ago
A symbol may look differently than original letter, for example N - №, € - E (Є), S - $, integral, с - ©, TM - ™, a - @, and so on. However, those symbols doesn't have lower case variants. Moreover, lower case k means kilo-, not a «smaller Kelvin».
- bee_rider 10mo ago
  Although it is a prefix in that case, so we should expect to see k alone. To maximally confuse things, I suggest we start using little k alone to resolve another annoying unit issue: let’s call 1 kilocalorie “k.”

I think just using uppercase Latin K is the recommendation. But, I dunno. Why would anybody apply upper or lower case operators to a temperature measurement? It just seems like a nonsense thing to do.

zygentoma 10mo ago
Maybe not for text to be read again, but might be sensible e.g. for slug or file name generation and the like...
- bee_rider 10mo ago
  That’s an interesting thought. IMO this is somewhere where if we were really doing something, we might as well go all the way and double check the relevant standards, right? The filesystem should accept some character set for use as names, and if we’re generating a name inside our program we should definitely find a character set that fits inside what the filesystem expects and that captures what we want to express… my gut says upper case Latin K would be the best pick if we needed to most portably represent Kelvin in a filename on a reasonably modern, consumer filesystem.
Eisenstein 10mo ago
I wonder if you can register a domain with it in the name.

infogulch 10mo ago

Unicode wants to be able to preserve round-trip re-encoding from this other standard which has separate letter-K and degree-K characters. Making these small sacrifices for compatibility is how Unicode became the defacto world standard.

shiomiru 10mo ago
The "other standard" in this case being IBM-944. (At least looking at https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode1.0.0/ch06.pdf https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode1.0.0/ch06.pdf p. 574 (=110 in the PDF) I only see a mapping from U+212A to that one.)
- infogulch 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - shiomiru 10mo ago
    That "deeper explanation" seems incorrect, considering that the KSC column is empty in the mapping linked above.
- kahirsch 10mo ago
  The ICU mappings files have entries for U212A in the following files: gb18030.ucm ibm-1364_P110-2007.ucm ibm-1390_P110-2003.ucm ibm-1399_P110-2003.ucm ibm-16684_P110-2003.ucm ibm-933_P110-1995.ucm ibm-949_P110-1999.ucm ibm-949_P11A-1999.ucm

ahoka 10mo ago

Probably useful in a non-latin codeset?

UltraSane 10mo ago

having a dedicated Kelvin symbol preserves the semantics.

oneshtein 10mo ago

A symbol may look differently than original letter, for example N - №, € - E (Є), S - $, integral, с - ©, TM - ™, a - @, and so on. However, those symbols doesn't have lower case variants. Moreover, lower case k means kilo-, not a «smaller Kelvin».

bee_rider 10mo ago
Although it is a prefix in that case, so we should expect to see k alone. To maximally confuse things, I suggest we start using little k alone to resolve another annoying unit issue: let’s call 1 kilocalorie “k.”