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A symbol for the Fediverse

symbol.fediverse.info

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Re: A symbol for the Fediverse

#31

Post by DonHopkins »

account42 wrote: post #21
DonHopkins wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also means three pointer dereferences in C++.

Please submit a proposal for this.

Once Bjarne Stroustrup's "Generalizing Overloading for C++2000" proposal is accepted, they won't be able to say no to moving beyond the PDP-11 instruction set and directly supporting tri-dereferences.

https://www.stroustrup.com/whitespace98.pdf

>Instead, it was decided to by default limit identifiers to a single character:

    int xy; // error: two-character identifier
>This may seems Draconian at first. However, since we now have the full Unicode character set available, we don't actually need hard-to-read long names. Such long names only make code obscure by causing unpleasantly long lines and unnatural line breaks. Multi-character names are a relic of languages that relied heavily on global name and encouraged overly-large scopes.

Re: A symbol for the Fediverse

#33

Post by DonHopkins »

actionfromafar wrote: post #8
actionfromafar wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(⁂^3)data = 42;

: droooop droop droop ;

Or the PostScript equivalent:

    /poop { pop pop } def       % number two
    /pooop { poop pop } def     % number three
    /poooop { poop poop } def   % number four
Inspired by graaand tradition of Lisp: http://clhs.lisp.se/Body/f_car_c.htm

Re: A symbol for the Fediverse

#34

Post by glenstein »

tokai wrote: post #20

I don't get the need for this. What is the use for a 'logo' that can be copy-pasted into text? If you write text you can just use the name - fediverse. Its like they get the worst of both worlds; a bad logo that is not even theirs but is an unicode character. And a shitty way of writing their name that makes it incomprehensible to outsiders.

Setting aside the logo itself, where I'm not sure how I feel about it yet or whether there's a need for it, you're losing me with this point about Unicode.

The rationale for having symbols I feel is so self-evident it shouldn't need any explanation. You know the save icon, you know the power button, you know the Twitter, well, X logo. You probably know the 'share' icon. I don't know if anyone's going to buy that it's bad to have a simple universal icon closely associated with a specific thing that we want widely known. And Unicode has an advantage over images of being, in a sense, more universal and more accessible.

Re: A symbol for the Fediverse

#35

Post by Retr0id »

tokai wrote: post #20

I don't get the need for this. What is the use for a 'logo' that can be copy-pasted into text? If you write text you can just use the name - fediverse. Its like they get the worst of both worlds; a bad logo that is not even theirs but is an unicode character. And a shitty way of writing their name that makes it incomprehensible to outsiders.

You don't even need to write out fediverse, "fedi" is broadly recognized as an abbreviation.

Re: A symbol for the Fediverse

#38

Post by glenstein »

KMnO4 wrote: post #28
emmet wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly explicit sarcasm indication should just die out entirely. Might as well be writing it longhand as "Just in case you missed it, this is a joke haha." every time you tell a joke.

I’m not sure if you’re being serious or not. I’ve never met you and tone isn’t conveyed over text. I’m assuming you’re joking, but maybe that’s exactly why we need explicit sarcasm demarcation.

Exactly right, and what I would add is that this is a Poe's Law thing.

I might even offer a corollary to that law, which is that the more unclear a statement is, the more inscrutable a it's intent, the more likely the original author will insist that it was 'obvious' sarcasm.

Re: A symbol for the Fediverse

#40

Post by neilv »

Elon Musk: "For maximum confusion, I'm renaming Twitter to X."

Fediverse: "Hold my beer."

Every time I try to suggest someone use the Fediverse, I have to say about 2 sentences just to name the thing I'm talking about, which they're more likely to know as "Mastodon". I don't see how pulling a "the artist formerly known as Prince" will help this branding problem, rather than hurt further.

Advocating this logo-in-text for branding is as confusing to me as the people who keep self-destructively saying "free software", to mean a very important and huge distinction from what every reasonable person assumes that "free software" means.

It seems less like evangelism, and more like exclusionary -- a small in-group shibboleth, or secret handshake.

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