Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Birkana hexadecimal number symbols

yawar.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 59 posts

Re: The Birkana hexadecimal number symbols

#11

Post by OMGWTF »

szc wrote: post #10

I think there is a problem with this notation - it is not self aligning. Meaning that if you hand wrote these you could then easily mis-read the values. It would probably be okay in printed form or if you were using lined paper, using the ruled line as a centre point.

Can you provide an example that could be misread?

I think its quite easy to judge whether a downwards accent starts at the top of the line or at the middle, similarly for the upwards accent if it starts at the middle or at the bottom.

Re: The Birkana hexadecimal number symbols

#12

Post by js8 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3
xupybd wrote: post #2

That's just binary? I find hex notation much easier to use and to communicate verbally.

I was thinking the same thing. If you're going binary just have a 4 x 4 dice face with different numbers of dots filled in.

For fun, I have designed a font like that once. Each hex digit was 4x4 grid, and there were (visually distinct and symmetric if possible) patterns of 0-15 filled dots.

I also thought about an extension for having a symbol for each byte value in 16x16 grid. The lower half byte would determine a 4x4 pattern, which would be repeated over the 16x16 grid according to the pattern corresponding to the higher half byte.

Re: The Birkana hexadecimal number symbols

#13

Post by smaddox »

szc wrote: post #10

I think there is a problem with this notation - it is not self aligning. Meaning that if you hand wrote these you could then easily mis-read the values. It would probably be okay in printed form or if you were using lined paper, using the ruled line as a centre point.

How would you misread the values? I suppose the symbols for 0x1/0x4 or 0x2/0x8 could be written sloppily enough to be confused, but it's no worse than trying to distinguish sloppily-written arabic numeral symbols. In fact, I suspect that these would be significantly easier to distinguish.

Re: The Birkana hexadecimal number symbols

#14

Post by alias_ »

szc wrote: post #10

I think there is a problem with this notation - it is not self aligning. Meaning that if you hand wrote these you could then easily mis-read the values. It would probably be okay in printed form or if you were using lined paper, using the ruled line as a centre point.

I think it would be relatively hard to misread. If you really wanted to make it clear the top and botom lines could be drawn horizontally.

Re: The Birkana hexadecimal number symbols

#15

Post by FoeNyx »

It could also interestingly be mixed with reflected binary code [1] with only one segment changing between two successive values.

> Theoretically, the Unicode Consortium could decide to add the Birkana symbols to the Unicode specification and some enterprising font designer could come up with a set for general use.

There are already some runes encoded in unicode, but most of the symbols of the birkana system does not match any existing historical runes though.

Yet, there is something in unicode that is somehow visually close [2]: braille patterns (2 columns of 4 rows of dots). But sadly the braille dots are not ordered in the same way because it was extended from 6 bits (from top to bottom : left column 123, right column 456) to 8 bits (from top to bottom : left column 1237, right column 4568).

--

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_code

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille_Patterns

Re: The Birkana hexadecimal number symbols

#16

Post by adrianratnapala »

xupybd wrote: post #2

That's just binary? I find hex notation much easier to use and to communicate verbally.

The point is that as you get used to reading them, you will recognise the complete glyph as a hex digit, without puzzling over the binary details. Just like reading any other script.

This does not work for quartets like 0100

Re: The Birkana hexadecimal number symbols

#17

Post by todd-davies »

> AMONG number systems, the hexadecimal system of counting (or 'radix') has a special place in the hearts of programmers, being closely related to binary, the fundamental number system used by all modern computers.

Could somebody explain how hexadecimal is more closely related to binary than any other base is? My only conclusion is that one hexadecimal digit is equivalent four binary digits.

Re: The Birkana hexadecimal number symbols

#18

Post by nine_k »

todd-davies wrote: post #17

> AMONG number systems, the hexadecimal system of counting (or 'radix') has a special place in the hearts of programmers, being closely related to binary, the fundamental number system used by all modern computers. Could somebody explain how hexadecimal is more closely related to binary than any other base is? My only conclusion is that one hexadecimal digit is equivalent four binary digits.

Octal is 3 bits per digit, hexadecimal is 4. Either was / is widely used wherever you need to interact with bits (eg embedded development). But 10-based cannot be easily mapped to binary, so does not work as well.

Re: The Birkana hexadecimal number symbols

#19

Post by andars »

todd-davies wrote: post #17

> AMONG number systems, the hexadecimal system of counting (or 'radix') has a special place in the hearts of programmers, being closely related to binary, the fundamental number system used by all modern computers. Could somebody explain how hexadecimal is more closely related to binary than any other base is? My only conclusion is that one hexadecimal digit is equivalent four binary digits.

I would say your conclusion is right. Some bases don't really make sense to use in conjunction with binary (5, 7, 10, etc.) but any power of two "works". I prefer hex to octal because a byte splits nicely into two hex digits.

Re: The Birkana hexadecimal number symbols

#20

Post by [deleted] »

todd-davies wrote: post #17

> AMONG number systems, the hexadecimal system of counting (or 'radix') has a special place in the hearts of programmers, being closely related to binary, the fundamental number system used by all modern computers. Could somebody explain how hexadecimal is more closely related to binary than any other base is? My only conclusion is that one hexadecimal digit is equivalent four binary digits.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN