8 ms·

That is Unicode U+0243 "Latin Capital Letter B with stroke". It is in the Latin Extended-B block, which contains among other mysteries, about half of the latin

by jws 14y ago

That is Unicode U+0243 "Latin Capital Letter B with stroke". It is in the Latin Extended-B block, which contains among other mysteries, about half of the latin letters with strokes. I'd love to see a "Unicode: What where they thinking?" page that documents why they thought a particular codepoint should be in the standard. I mean, capital A, B, and C with a stroke, but not capital D? A and C have their stroke diagonal, B has its horizontal, U also gets a horizontal stroke, but it is named a "bar". All very mysterious.

BorgHunter 14y ago
Capital D does have a "with stroke" character, Ð. Code point U+00D0. In actuality, it's a capital eth (ð), which is a bona fide letter by itself rather than an existing letter with an extra mark in it.
- zokier 14y ago
  > Capital D does have a "with stroke" character, Ð. Code point U+00D0. In actuality, it's a capital eth (ð), which is a bona fide letter by itself rather than an existing letter with an extra mark in it. Actually Unicode has two D with strokes, the "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ETH" Ð (U+00D0) and "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D WITH STROKE" Đ (U+0110). The uppercase letters are basically indistinguishable, but they have different lowercase letters: đ and ð.
fjarlq 14y ago
There is a capital D with stroke: Đ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_with_stroke http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_with_stroke http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_(diacritic) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_(diacritic)
jrochkind1 14y ago
The OP suggests that U+0243 B with stroke is a "capitalized alternate symbol for the voiced bilabial fricative in Americanist phonetic notation" I would suspect that the other stroke capitals that are present were used in specific actual alphabets (and probably represented in some existing pre-unicode font or code block), whether 'Americanist phonetic alphabet', or other -- and the stroke capitals that are not present, were not. In general, unicode codepoints are justified by actually existing use. (There is an interesting metaphysical problem that arises as our lives become increasingly digitized -- things that are not present in unicode _won't_ be used, because they won't be _able_ to be used online... so how will new things be added justified by use, once all the existing pre-digital glyphs have been added? I dunno.)
- vanderZwan 14y ago
  > In general, unicode codepoints are justified by actually existing use. I vaguely remember something about Klingon and unicode related to that... ah, there we go: "In September 1997, Michael Everson made a proposal for encoding this in Unicode.[2] The Unicode Technical Committee rejected the Klingon proposal in May 2001 on the grounds that research showed almost no use of the script for communication, and the vast majority of the people who did use Klingon employed the Latin alphabet by preference.[3] Everson created a mapping of pIqaD into the Private Use Area of Unicode, which he listed in the ConScript Unicode Registry (U+F8D0 to U+F8FF[4][5])" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_alphabets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_alphabets
  - simonster 14y ago
    Everson did manage to get J.R.R. Tolkien's Cirth and Tengwar tentatively included; see http://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/smp/ http://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/smp/
    - dbaupp 14y ago
      Interesting! (The proposals themselves, for anyone else interested: http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n1641/n1641.htm http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n1641/n1641.htm, http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n1642/n1642.htm http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n1642/n1642.htm)
    - lifthrasiir 14y ago
      No. The roadmap indicates that they are formally proposed for inclusion and yet to be accepted (and nor rejected either, as in [1]). From the bottom of the roadmap: > (Text between parentheses) indicates scripts for which proposals have been formally submitted to the UTC or to WG2. There is generally a link to the formal proposal. [1] http://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/not-the-roadmap/ http://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/not-the-roadmap/
      - simonster 14y ago
bcoates 14y ago
Michael Kaplan's "Every Character Has a Story" is kind of like that, but it looks like he's adding to it slower than the Unicode folks are adding characters. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/tags/every+character+has+a+story/ http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/tags/every+character...
celoyd 14y ago
The Unicode people don’t sit around and invent characters – nor do they systematically determine the complete list of characters that should be in the standard. Instead, they consider proposals from people who want their already-in-use character sets to included in the standard. So if someone proposes SINGING OCTOPUS, DANCING OCTOPUS, and SINGING SQUID, but not DANCING SQUID, well, DANCING SQUID won’t be in Unicode. There are lots of gaps like this.
- Erwin 14y ago
  The dancing octopus will have to wait for the next version. The unicode consortium is currently only adding the SMILING OCTOPUS: http://codepoints.net/U+1F419 http://codepoints.net/U+1F419 Probably not supported by your browser's font just yet: 🐙🐙🐙
  - steveklabnik 14y ago
    It is in my Firefox Aurora. :D Thanks for sharing codepoints.net, I didn't know about it before. I wish the campfire :metal: emoji was in 'actual emoji'...
  - a_p 14y ago
    I haven't looked at the Supplementary Multilingual Plane: Miscellaneous Symbols And Pictographs [1F300...1F5FF] in a while. My favorite characters are 👹 (Japanese Ogre)👺(Japanese Goblin)👻(Ghost) and 👽(Extra Terrestrial). The symbol 💣 (Bomb, 1F4A3) is useful for reviewing movies using Leonard Maltin's notation.
    - anfedorov 14y ago
      Since we're picking favorites, why not the happy pile of poo? 💩 It's not officially supposed to be happy, but Apple seems to have decided eyes and a smile would give it more character. http://codepoints.net/U+1F4A9 http://codepoints.net/U+1F4A9
  - omarali 14y ago
    Works on Opera too.
nuxi 14y ago
There are three capital D letters with strokes within the Latin range: U+00D0 (capital Eth - old English, Icelandic), U+0110 (capital D with stroke - south Slavic, Vietnamese), U+0189 (capital African D - African languages).
dudus 14y ago
I had my "What are they thinking?" moment when I found out about snowman. http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2603/index.htm http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2603/index.htm After that the only one to shock me was "Pile of poo" http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f4a9/index.htm http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f4a9/index.htm
- ErikRogneby 14y ago
  the diversity in font implementation is interesting to see: http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2603/fontsupport.htm http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2603/fontsuppor...
- cpeterso 14y ago
  Is 'PILE OF POO' (U+1F4A9) more shocking than 'LOVE HOTEL' (U+1F3E9)? http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f3e9/index.htm http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f3e9/index.htm See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_hotel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_hotel
  - JoshuaRedmond 14y ago
    You may be interested in this wonderful article [1] about how these and many other unusual symbols ended up in Unicode. I personally had never considered how much of an issue including flags could be. Quite an interesting discussion around it on HN as well. [2] [1] - http://www.reigndesign.com/blog/love-hotels-and-unicode/ http://www.reigndesign.com/blog/love-hotels-and-unicode/ [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3792247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3792247
  - TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
    Both were readily in common use on Japanese phones. Most of Unicode is existing character sets being incorporated.
    - barbs 14y ago
      Looks like they're part of the Emoji set http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#Emoji_in_the_Unicode_standard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#Emoji_in_the_Unicode_stan...
brazzy 14y ago
> A and C have their stroke diagonal, B has its horizontal That's not something specified by Unicode, it's up to font designers how characters actually look.

by jws 14y ago

BorgHunter 14y ago

Capital D does have a "with stroke" character, Ð. Code point U+00D0. In actuality, it's a capital eth (ð), which is a bona fide letter by itself rather than an existing letter with an extra mark in it.

zokier 14y ago
> Capital D does have a "with stroke" character, Ð. Code point U+00D0. In actuality, it's a capital eth (ð), which is a bona fide letter by itself rather than an existing letter with an extra mark in it. Actually Unicode has two D with strokes, the "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ETH" Ð (U+00D0) and "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D WITH STROKE" Đ (U+0110). The uppercase letters are basically indistinguishable, but they have different lowercase letters: đ and ð.

fjarlq 14y ago

There is a capital D with stroke: Đ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_with_stroke http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_with_stroke http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_(diacritic) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_(diacritic)

jrochkind1 14y ago

The OP suggests that U+0243 B with stroke is a "capitalized alternate symbol for the voiced bilabial fricative in Americanist phonetic notation" I would suspect that the other stroke capitals that are present were used in specific actual alphabets (and probably represented in some existing pre-unicode font or code block), whether 'Americanist phonetic alphabet', or other -- and the stroke capitals that are not present, were not. In general, unicode codepoints are justified by actually existing use. (There is an interesting metaphysical problem that arises as our lives become increasingly digitized -- things that are not present in unicode _won't_ be used, because they won't be _able_ to be used online... so how will new things be added justified by use, once all the existing pre-digital glyphs have been added? I dunno.)

vanderZwan 14y ago
> In general, unicode codepoints are justified by actually existing use. I vaguely remember something about Klingon and unicode related to that... ah, there we go: "In September 1997, Michael Everson made a proposal for encoding this in Unicode.[2] The Unicode Technical Committee rejected the Klingon proposal in May 2001 on the grounds that research showed almost no use of the script for communication, and the vast majority of the people who did use Klingon employed the Latin alphabet by preference.[3] Everson created a mapping of pIqaD into the Private Use Area of Unicode, which he listed in the ConScript Unicode Registry (U+F8D0 to U+F8FF[4][5])" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_alphabets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_alphabets
- simonster 14y ago
  Everson did manage to get J.R.R. Tolkien's Cirth and Tengwar tentatively included; see http://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/smp/ http://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/smp/
  - dbaupp 14y ago
    Interesting! (The proposals themselves, for anyone else interested: http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n1641/n1641.htm http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n1641/n1641.htm, http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n1642/n1642.htm http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n1642/n1642.htm)
  - lifthrasiir 14y ago
    No. The roadmap indicates that they are formally proposed for inclusion and yet to be accepted (and nor rejected either, as in [1]). From the bottom of the roadmap: > (Text between parentheses) indicates scripts for which proposals have been formally submitted to the UTC or to WG2. There is generally a link to the formal proposal. [1] http://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/not-the-roadmap/ http://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/not-the-roadmap/
    - simonster 14y ago

bcoates 14y ago

Michael Kaplan's "Every Character Has a Story" is kind of like that, but it looks like he's adding to it slower than the Unicode folks are adding characters. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/tags/every+character+has+a+story/ http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/tags/every+character...

celoyd 14y ago

The Unicode people don’t sit around and invent characters – nor do they systematically determine the complete list of characters that should be in the standard. Instead, they consider proposals from people who want their already-in-use character sets to included in the standard. So if someone proposes SINGING OCTOPUS, DANCING OCTOPUS, and SINGING SQUID, but not DANCING SQUID, well, DANCING SQUID won’t be in Unicode. There are lots of gaps like this.

Erwin 14y ago
The dancing octopus will have to wait for the next version. The unicode consortium is currently only adding the SMILING OCTOPUS: http://codepoints.net/U+1F419 http://codepoints.net/U+1F419 Probably not supported by your browser's font just yet: 🐙🐙🐙
- steveklabnik 14y ago
  It is in my Firefox Aurora. :D Thanks for sharing codepoints.net, I didn't know about it before. I wish the campfire :metal: emoji was in 'actual emoji'...
- a_p 14y ago
  I haven't looked at the Supplementary Multilingual Plane: Miscellaneous Symbols And Pictographs [1F300...1F5FF] in a while. My favorite characters are 👹 (Japanese Ogre)👺(Japanese Goblin)👻(Ghost) and 👽(Extra Terrestrial). The symbol 💣 (Bomb, 1F4A3) is useful for reviewing movies using Leonard Maltin's notation.
  - anfedorov 14y ago
    Since we're picking favorites, why not the happy pile of poo? 💩 It's not officially supposed to be happy, but Apple seems to have decided eyes and a smile would give it more character. http://codepoints.net/U+1F4A9 http://codepoints.net/U+1F4A9
- omarali 14y ago
  Works on Opera too.

nuxi 14y ago

There are three capital D letters with strokes within the Latin range: U+00D0 (capital Eth - old English, Icelandic), U+0110 (capital D with stroke - south Slavic, Vietnamese), U+0189 (capital African D - African languages).

dudus 14y ago

I had my "What are they thinking?" moment when I found out about snowman. http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2603/index.htm http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2603/index.htm After that the only one to shock me was "Pile of poo" http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f4a9/index.htm http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f4a9/index.htm

ErikRogneby 14y ago
the diversity in font implementation is interesting to see: http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2603/fontsupport.htm http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2603/fontsuppor...
cpeterso 14y ago
Is 'PILE OF POO' (U+1F4A9) more shocking than 'LOVE HOTEL' (U+1F3E9)? http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f3e9/index.htm http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f3e9/index.htm See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_hotel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_hotel
- JoshuaRedmond 14y ago
  You may be interested in this wonderful article [1] about how these and many other unusual symbols ended up in Unicode. I personally had never considered how much of an issue including flags could be. Quite an interesting discussion around it on HN as well. [2] [1] - http://www.reigndesign.com/blog/love-hotels-and-unicode/ http://www.reigndesign.com/blog/love-hotels-and-unicode/ [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3792247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3792247
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  Both were readily in common use on Japanese phones. Most of Unicode is existing character sets being incorporated.
  - barbs 14y ago
    Looks like they're part of the Emoji set http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#Emoji_in_the_Unicode_standard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#Emoji_in_the_Unicode_stan...

brazzy 14y ago

> A and C have their stroke diagonal, B has its horizontal That's not something specified by Unicode, it's up to font designers how characters actually look.