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Announcing Unicode 7.0

unicode-inc.blogspot.com

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Re: Announcing Unicode 7.0

#41

Post by ximeng »

smackfu wrote: post #36

This page has links to the proposals to add characters: http://babelstone.blogspot.com/2013/10/whats-new-in-unicode-... Including this one with comments on the Wingdings addition. http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n4239.pdf a) Ireland recommends adding the following new characters to this table: 1F597 REVERSED HAND WITH MIDDLE FINGER EXTENDED 1F598 RAISED HAND WITH PART BETWEEN MIDDLE AND RING FINGERS

Love the uk's understated battle with the US over Latin letter middle dot. Man in business suit levitating is another great character. Amazing that this is someone's job.

Re: Announcing Unicode 7.0

#42

Post by sho_hn »

buster wrote: post #34
sho_hn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are emoji different from other logograms?

I don't even understand your question. How is a character of a normal language (and i consider chinese normal) different from the picture of crap? And why would we put up a huge library of tiny pictures? If i want to look at cat pics, i don't open up the font browser. And where is the HN-logo unicode point? Can i register my own somewhere? Unicode should be used to represent language and not anti-piracy symbols or po…

So what about all the characters in Unicode that map to different phonemes or words in different languages? For example, Latin letters are sometimes used for different phonemes in different languages (and dialects, and applications like romanization), and Han logograms are sometimes used for different words/morphemes in different languages. How is that different from "picture of crap" mapping to different specific words/phrases in different languages? You can certainly point at a picture of a pile of crap and name it in many normal languages.

But wait - what's a "normal language" and what's a normal graphical representation of it? Is it down to the development process? A lot of writing systems were originally designed/agreed upon by small groups of people, too, for example.

My questions (and other comments in this subthread) aim to get you to think more abstractly about the problem space and define your beef more accurately, because I'm interested in this question (where should Unicode draw the line) as well. Let's brainstorm, basically.

Re: Announcing Unicode 7.0

#43

Post by buster »

smackfu wrote: post #39
buster wrote: post #12

Do we really need small pictures in fonts?

That's not really the right question. We already have small pictures in fonts, just look at Wingdings or Webdings. Unicode is just assigning them to unique code points so they can be represented in a document without requiring the font to be specified.

And you consider Wingdings a good thing in the first place?! It's an abomination that should never have happened.

Re: Announcing Unicode 7.0

#45

Post by greggman »

gtirloni wrote: post #23
buster wrote: post #12

Do we really need small pictures in fonts?

I had the exact same question pop up in my mind after seeing the emoji's. I understand all characters can be considered nothing but pictures, but a thermometer, really? Is this used in any widespread language to be of significance to Unicode? Is Unicode trying to also offer some kind of clipart capability? I think we've seen our fair share of derailed projects in IT. Unicode is certainly a very critical project, whic…

Is the thermometer symbol used widely? No idea. Is emoji used widely? Yes, In Japan 🇯🇵 (and Korea? 🇰🇷) and has been for > 15 years. A common email/msg composed by a Japanese woman 👧 age 15 to 35 uses many emoji.

I realize this message will not render correctly in Chrome because Chrome, at least Desktop Chrome, does not yet support emoji 😭

Re: Announcing Unicode 7.0

#46

Post by dragonwriter »

jstalin wrote: post #28

Forgive my ignorance, but how do these actually enter the real world? Do browsers adopt these new characters?

> Forgive my ignorance, but how do these actually enter the real world? Do browsers adopt these new characters?

Browsers don't add characters, fonts do.

Re: Announcing Unicode 7.0

#48

Post by sho_hn »

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.

> Did you ever visit websites that use glyphs your font doesn't know?

Other comments have touched on this already, but I want to substantiate with additional information: In practice, fonts that cover many different writing systems at once are relatively rare. Your typical Western font will focus on Latin with varying coverage of descendants (like the Portuguese and Vietnamese alphabets) and perhaps expand to cover Cyrillic, but not more. Conversely, it's rare for a font by a Korean foundry to have equivalent Latin/Cyrillic coverage next to its native Hangul alphabet.

There's plenty of documents that mix these writing systems, though. I do in fact visit websites that aren't covered by any one font in my browser's default settings or any one family named in the site's markup/CSS all the time, and you probably do too.

Hence the font stacks on all relevant platforms perform glyph substitution: If font X doesn't contain a glyph, it'll go looking for a font Y that does and drop that glyph in. Many platforms allow you to manipulate substitution preference e.g. by defining aliases for font families.

Re: Announcing Unicode 7.0

#49

Post by mbq »

masklinn wrote: post #26
buster wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Because it's waste. Waste of what? > Because if not every font implements it, what is the usefulness of it? Most fonts only implements a fraction of unicode, is unicode a waste? Is cyrillic in unicode a waste? Is Cherokee? Braille symbols? Buginese and Meroitic cursive? > Did you ever visit websites that use glyphs your font doesn't know? Yes? The software will fall back on a font which does provide the glyphs, or…

For instance a waste of time of font designers; you can make rational decision about including certain alphabets (by analysing the target group demands), but selecting a reasonable subset of bazyllion random, singular pictures to draw and test is a major headache. Obviously this way the users get inconsistent experience.
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