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Why isn't the external link symbol in Unicode? (2018)

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Re: Why isn't the external link symbol in Unicode? (2018)

#121

Post by goto11 »

ken wrote: post #115
goto11 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah because Wingdings was a preexisting character set and Unicode was designed to be a superset of all existing character sets in use.

Thus 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”.

It 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.

Re: Why isn't the external link symbol in Unicode? (2018)

#122

Post by ori_b »

ken wrote: post #115
goto11 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah because Wingdings was a preexisting character set and Unicode was designed to be a superset of all existing character sets in use.

Thus 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”.

The goal was to eliminate "we can't switch to Unicode, it doesn't have ® symbols" objections.

Re: Why isn't the external link symbol in Unicode? (2018)

#123

Post by chrisseaton »

pfranz wrote: post #97
chrisseaton wrote: post #78

Why do you need to know that a link is an external link?

I see it often in intranets, wikis, and PDF documentation. It's an additional context clue that you're leaving a closed website. The most egregious examples give you a separate click-through screen when leaving the website. Government web pages seem to do this the most. It would be nice if we could all use a standard icon or some other constant UI element--like a single underline for internal references and double un…

Yeah but why?

What do people do with the information that a link is external? Do people think 'I'll follow this link - oh no wait a minute it's external I won't'?

Re: Why isn't the external link symbol in Unicode? (2018)

#125

Post by ori_b »

bluescrn wrote: post #17
josh_fyi wrote: post #6

The reason for rejection, for better or worse, is that this is a functional element, like a button, rather than part of running text.

Like the play/pause symbols then, which are already in there? And since when was a smiling poop an ‘element of plain text’

> And since when was a smiling poop an ‘element of plain text’

Since the Japanese phone vendors shoved it into the character encoding and forced everyone to deal with it if they wanted to be compatible.

Re: Why isn't the external link symbol in Unicode? (2018)

#126

Post by buckminster »

kchr wrote: post #112
Aeolun wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unicode is full of whole blocks of weird sets of lines and borders. As far as I’m concerned adding the symbol just to make it easier to style links makes total sense.

Those "weird" characters has been used for ASCII and ANSI based text-mode user interfaces since the dawn of UI as a concept.

Being pedantic, those box drawing characters are neither ASCII nor ANSI. They are part of the original IBM PC character sets. Windows refers to them as the OEM character sets.

Re: Why isn't the external link symbol in Unicode? (2018)

#127

Post by gnulinux »

cabalamat wrote: post #20

> The UTC rejected the proposals to add “external link sign”, most recently in L2/12-169. It is unclear that the entity in question is actually an element of plain text Nor is Pile of Poo, and that's in Unicode. If external Link was added to Unicode, I expect it would be more used than 1000s of characters that are in it.

> Nor is Pile of Poo

I really really don't understand this point. We have evidence that people use pile of poo in plaintext today in instant messaging all the time. Isn't this enough evidence that pile of poo belongs to plaintext? I'm not trying to be facetious; it's really puzzling to me. Since every single comment in this thread is about pile of poo, whereas it seems to me the worst possible example since it's such a widely used emoji.

Re: Why isn't the external link symbol in Unicode? (2018)

#128

Post by LudwigNagasena »

goto11 wrote: post #104
benibela wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

Yeah because Wingdings was a preexisting character set and Unicode was designed to be a superset of all existing character sets in use.

Isn’t Wingdings just a font that can work with whatever character set?

Re: Why isn't the external link symbol in Unicode? (2018)

#129

Post by EGreg »

For this stuff we have fontawesome and ttf generators from svg’s. Just grab svg icons on thenounproject and make your way own font!

I happen to disagree with the unicode decision because there should be a section for basic commands so they can be rendered in diff fonts. But whatever — as I say don’t wait for standards if they don’t exist, make your own!

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