191–200 of 210 posts
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But you may also say "Next to the link you will see [EXTERNAL LINK] which indicates that the link leads to another website."
That reasoning would make every conceivable icon a valid target for inclusion. To actually get the character included, you can't just reason that it might be used in a certain way, you will have to demonstrate it with actual and authentic use in the wild. The accepted proposal for the inclusion of the power symbol is a nice example of how this works. If you can find a bunch of printed manuals or books or websites tha…
I find myself agreeing with the rejection. As much as I dislike the ridiculous amount of emojis in Unicode, and their increasingly widespread use, they do fit plain text communication, whereas an "external link" symbol does not. My heuristic is something I'll call SMS sniff test : would it make sense to type that symbol into a text message? If it wouldn't, then it doesn't belong in Unicode. "External link" symbol tel…
Let me pass a few things by your sniffer, here. Here's some random characters from the "Math Symbols" page of OSX's character viewer. ⨐⨔⊹⊰⨶⨹⩫⫸⧯⧼ Did you know that Unicode has an entire set of dominos in it? 🀱🀲🀳🀴🀵🀶🀷🀸🀹🀺🀻🀼🀽🀾🀿🁀🁁🁂🁃🁄🁅🁆🁇🁈🁉🁊🁋🁌🁍🁎🁏🁐🁑🁒🁓🁔🁕🁖🁗🁘🁙🁚🁛🁜🁝🁞🁟🁠🁡 Twice: once horizontally, once vertically. 🁣🁤🁥🁦🁧🁨🁩🁪🁫🁬🁭🁮🁰🁱🁲🁳🁴🁵🁶🁷🁸🁹🁺🁻🁼🁽🁾🁿🂀🂁🂂🂃🂄🂅🂆�…
If your browser feels like displaying Wingdings codepoints, something like this: http://egypt.urnash.com
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The backspace symbol makes perfect sense. You may very well want to say "Press ⌫ to delete the selected object".
I'm not opposed to the backspace symbol, but by that logic you could include anything in unicode as anything could a symbol you'd like to refer to. I mean, you might want to say "External links can be identified by their □ marker" or "The Windows key is marked □ and can be found to the left of the space bar"
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The closest alternative I’ve seen is definitely north east arrow with hook. Personally, I like its simpler appearance. Ideally you would still want to label it on hover with some alt or title attribute text.
I would expect the north east arrow with hook to be used for "go back up", e.g. after having followed a footnote. The hook implies an element of "returning" for me.
I find myself agreeing with the rejection. As much as I dislike the ridiculous amount of emojis in Unicode, and their increasingly widespread use, they do fit plain text communication, whereas an "external link" symbol does not. My heuristic is something I'll call SMS sniff test : would it make sense to type that symbol into a text message? If it wouldn't, then it doesn't belong in Unicode. "External link" symbol tel…
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Let me pass a few things by your sniffer, here. Here's some random characters from the "Math Symbols" page of OSX's character viewer. ⨐⨔⊹⊰⨶⨹⩫⫸⧯⧼ Did you know that Unicode has an entire set of dominos in it? 🀱🀲🀳🀴🀵🀶🀷🀸🀹🀺🀻🀼🀽🀾🀿🁀🁁🁂🁃🁄🁅🁆🁇🁈🁉🁊🁋🁌🁍🁎🁏🁐🁑🁒🁓🁔🁕🁖🁗🁘🁙🁚🁛🁜🁝🁞🁟🁠🁡 Twice: once horizontally, once vertically. 🁣🁤🁥🁦🁧🁨🁩🁪🁫🁬🁭🁮🁰🁱🁲🁳🁴🁵🁶🁷🁸🁹🁺🁻🁼🁽🁾🁿🂀🂁🂂🂃🂄🂅🂆�…
Oh also I just wanna note that if we go by a previous convention, there is a perfectly good symbol for "this is an external link": back in the days when Geocities was relevant, it was pretty common to see external links marked by a little Earth gif after them, because it was a link to somewhere else on the World! Wide! Web. If your browser feels like displaying Wingdings codepoints, something like this: http://egypt.…
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The use of symbols in text messages is one reason to include them in Unicode, but not the only one. Another is accessibility, particularly for blind people. The more commonly used symbols are in Unicode, the less we have to remind website authors to include alt text, or that the symbols in their custom icon font pose an accessibility problem. Also, co-opting an existing symbol, such as the degrees symbol (which I've…
Wouldn't a screen-reader recognize a link even without the symbol? I can see the problem of the screen-reader telling the user that there's some garbage image at the end of the link, but the image really is garbage in that case, since I imagine the screen-reader would make it obvious that there's a link there.
I find myself agreeing with the rejection. As much as I dislike the ridiculous amount of emojis in Unicode, and their increasingly widespread use, they do fit plain text communication, whereas an "external link" symbol does not. My heuristic is something I'll call SMS sniff test : would it make sense to type that symbol into a text message? If it wouldn't, then it doesn't belong in Unicode. "External link" symbol tel…
On the other hand, I used to use both "play" and "link" symbols in past resumes, where I could have really used a proper link symbol. Ideally I wanted something universally known, but the box with an arrow that Wikipedia used wasn't as well known then, and was always a small image and not available as a character. I opted for the interlinked chain links symbol instead. I would propose updating this SMS sniff test to…
I explicitly don't want it to be "Wikipedia sniff test", because that's equivalent to a "Webpage sniff test", which is equivalent to "anything goes", because icon fonts exist now and are used.
That said, other comments made me realize that Unicode is better described as "whatever was there in all the codepages around the world at the time of bootstrapping the Unicode standard" plus what's typically used in a written language, plus SMS sniff test.