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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)

#141

Post by kps »

geocar wrote: post #131
TeMPOraL wrote: post #42

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…

> 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. I accept that heuristic, and find myself agreeing with it for the purposes of the external link character. Let me try to convince you: This is a real conversation: A> Are you familiar with Homebrew? You can get it from brew.sh. B> Ok. Where is brew.sh? I…

Historically were used; what happened to that convention? See " rel="nofollow">http://example.com/> or email me at for details.

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

#142

Post by 11235813213455 »

U+1F517 https://emojipedia.org/link/ might do this job

Anyway I think we can avoid target="_blank" most of the time, you can have a https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WindowEvent... event listener if something needs to be saved before the page location changes

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

#143

Post by yissp »

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”.

Unicode Russell's paradox

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

#144

Post by q92z8oeif »

geocar wrote: post #131
TeMPOraL wrote: post #42

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…

> 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. I accept that heuristic, and find myself agreeing with it for the purposes of the external link character. Let me try to convince you: This is a real conversation: A> Are you familiar with Homebrew? You can get it from brew.sh. B> Ok. Where is brew.sh? I…

website, or site, are the words you are looking for.

Which also lack a decent Unicode symbol despite being a word used in plain text. ️

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

#146

Post by andrewzah »

geocar wrote: post #138
andrewzah wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like an issue that could be solved by updating the renderer's gtld list with the various new ones that have been coming out instead of adding invisible meta characters. Phones already do it for .com, .gov, etc, but our cutesy .sh, .dev, .rocks, .xyz, etc will take a bit to catch up.

> That sounds like an issue that could be solved by updating the renderer's gtld list with the various new ones that have been coming out instead of adding invisible meta characters. Negative. My renderer is a piece of paper.

... Why would an invisible meta-character for links be necessary if the output is paper? You can already specify a link by prepending 'http://', etc.

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

#148

Post by jolmg »

mwcampbell wrote: post #137
TeMPOraL wrote: post #42

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…

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.

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

#149

Post by geocar »

andrewzah wrote: post #146
geocar wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That sounds like an issue that could be solved by updating the renderer's gtld list with the various new ones that have been coming out instead of adding invisible meta characters. Negative. My renderer is a piece of paper.

... Why would an invisible meta-character for links be necessary if the output is paper? You can already specify a link by prepending ' http://' , etc.

Sorry. I thought that would make it clear.

The request is for a code point to represent the visible external link character, not for an invisible control-code to decorate some structured data (which cannot "appear" on paper).

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

#150

Post by mwcampbell »

jolmg wrote: post #148
mwcampbell wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Absolutely. But if a web author quite reasonably adds a symbol for the benefit of the sighted majority, using an unlabeled image, an icon font, or coopting an existing symbol (e.g. degrees), that leads to extra clutter or confusion for blind users. If the symbol is in Unicode, we can have a solution that works well for everyone.
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