Announcing Unicode 7.0 • Hacker News Board

Re: Announcing Unicode 7.0

#11

Post by hf » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 12:01 PM UTC

I value the Unicode effort so much, I consider its inconsistencies a major pain point in my life.

Why, for the love of Zeus, is there no codepoint for

    GREEK SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER ALPHA

Am I missing something? Why should I never want to subscript α? I know a few physicists who gladly would.

It doesn't end there, see the article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_subscripts_and_supersc... which sports a consolidated overview.

Tell me I'm overlooking something very obvious.

Re: Announcing Unicode 7.0

#12

Post by buster » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 12:03 PM UTC

Do we really need small pictures in fonts?

Re: Announcing Unicode 7.0

#13

Post by kabdib » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 12:11 PM UTC

beobab wrote: post #9

"Notched Right Semicircle With Three Dots"? I'm not sure I want to know what this would be used for.

Oh, I'm sure that someone in denotational semantics will use it for something... :-)

(Twice having tried to learn DS, thinking it would be "good for me", only to rage quit after running into the next half dozen undefined hieroglyphics...)

Re: Announcing Unicode 7.0

#14

Post by jschulenklopper » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 12:18 PM UTC

hf wrote: post #11

I value the Unicode effort so much, I consider its inconsistencies a major pain point in my life. Why, for the love of Zeus, is there no codepoint for GREEK SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER ALPHA Am I missing something? Why should I never want to subscript α? I know a few physicists who gladly would. It doesn't end there, see the article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_subscripts_and_supersc... which sports a consolidate…

> Why is there no codepoint for GREEK SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER ALPHA?

Could it be that (quoted from that Wikipedia page): The World Wide Web Consortium and the Unicode Consortium have made recommendations on the choice between using markup and using superscript and subscript characters: "When used in mathematical context (MathML) it is recommended to consistently use style markup for superscripts and subscripts."

Inconsistency remains though, since the Unicode standard defines characters for full superscript Latin lowercase alphabet except q, a limited uppercase Latin alphabet, a few subscripted lowercase letters, and some Greek letters.

Re: Announcing Unicode 7.0

#15

Post by rational-future » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 12:21 PM UTC

buster wrote: post #12

Do we really need small pictures in fonts?

That is what fonts are - sets of small pictures, accessible by an index.

Re: Announcing Unicode 7.0

#16

Post by stephen_g » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 12:25 PM UTC

buster wrote: post #12

Do we really need small pictures in fonts?

Why not? It's not like every font of every typeface has to implement every Unicode code point.

You'd probably only have one or two installed that have the emoji characters.

Re: Announcing Unicode 7.0

#17

Post by buster » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 12:26 PM UTC

rational-future wrote: post #15

buster wrote: post #12

Do we really need small pictures in fonts?

That is what fonts are - sets of small pictures, accessible by an index.

I really don't agree on your definition of fonts. When i write a letter i am certainly not painting rows of little pictures on a sheet of paper.

Re: Announcing Unicode 7.0

#18

Post by buster » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 12:30 PM UTC

stephen_g wrote: post #16

buster wrote: post #12

Do we really need small pictures in fonts?

Why not? It's not like every font of every typeface has to implement every Unicode code point. You'd probably only have one or two installed that have the emoji characters.

Because it's waste. Because if not every font implements it, what is the usefulness of it? Did you ever visit websites that use glyphs your font doesn't know? How would you use those pictures on a website, when you can't even guarantee the style of the picture, because it may be implemented differently or not at all.

It just looks like a big waste for no good reason.

Re: Announcing Unicode 7.0

#19

Post by justincormack » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 12:39 PM UTC

buster wrote: post #18

stephen_g wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? It's not like every font of every typeface has to implement every Unicode code point. You'd probably only have one or two installed that have the emoji characters.

Because it's waste. Because if not every font implements it, what is the usefulness of it? Did you ever visit websites that use glyphs your font doesn't know? How would you use those pictures on a website, when you can't even guarantee the style of the picture, because it may be implemented differently or not at all. It just looks like a big waste for no good reason.

Glyphs that are not supported should fallback to a font that does support them.

Re: Announcing Unicode 7.0

#20

Post by justincormack » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 12:40 PM UTC

buster wrote: post #17

rational-future wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is what fonts are - sets of small pictures, accessible by an index.

I really don't agree on your definition of fonts. When i write a letter i am certainly not painting rows of little pictures on a sheet of paper.

You are if you write hieroglyphics. From another point of view you are when you write English too.