71–80 of 210 posts
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…
„Plz send me the .
“
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…
I can buy that the name in unicode should be something other than "external link". It could be something more generic like "external reference". Boom, now it can be accepted because it's not tied to .
The problem with the rejection is that "that last bit of differently-formatted text is an active element in this application, leading to an outside resource" is that it's kind of a strawman: why be so specific just to reject it because you've decided to be so specific?
Though all of that justification is kind of unnecessary. Really, I just find it ridiculous that the unicode group is going to suddenly become prude about a ubiquitous symbol yet have 20 different check mark symbols. Sure, if everyone made the "but there are 20 different check mark symbols so why can't I have ?" argument, unicode would be even more ridiculous. And that's an argument to reject , not one of the most ubiquitous symbols on the internet.
"Unicode has a bunch of stupid symbols, so it should at least add the most useful symbols that we use on the internet" really is a good argument.
It was summarily rejected with the nonsense statement (in full):
> Thank you for your submission. This was discussed during last week's UTC meeting. I was directed to let you know UTC feels that, as submitted, the proposal does not sufficiently demonstrate a plain text need for such a symbol. The context for usage is mark-up with links by default.
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…
Plausible sms: „Plz send me the . “
https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f517/index.ht...
Can't paste it on HN, as the Unicode/Emoji filter seems to be removing it.
I'd like the condition on the plain text to be relaxed. I would love to be able to use Unicode for creating basic interfaces. I would love to have basic interface elements such as a magnifying glass, "save" icons and external link to be part of the standard. Maybe they don't strictly find their use but for one people would find the use if they were there, and two, there are already (granted, grandfathered) elements t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you but including it would make it easier to express in text-only environments
Plain text environments never encounter the problem that this symbol solves, which is to reveal that an anchor tag (which is not plain text, and typically has visible text that isn't the URL) leads to some other authority. But for a text mode interface that does have full blown anchor tags -- not very mainstream -- you have a point.
> The UTC rejected the proposals to add “external link sign”, most recently in L2/12-169. It is unclear that the entity in question is actually an element of plain text Nor is Pile of Poo, and that's in Unicode. If external Link was added to Unicode, I expect it would be more used than 1000s of characters that are in it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plain text environments never encounter the problem that this symbol solves, which is to reveal that an anchor tag (which is not plain text, and typically has visible text that isn't the URL) leads to some other authority. But for a text mode interface that does have full blown anchor tags -- not very mainstream -- you have a point.
Reddit is mainstream. Other forums with linking might find the symbol handy.. Not sure why unicode has got to be about SMS..
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…
This made me stop and think because I've never really wondered about what belongs and doesn't belong in Unicode, and then I went looking at what strange corners Unicode has and wow the "Miscellaneous Technical" code block is such a strange thing. * It has APL symbols (checking the Wiki article on APL syntax and the APL standard, it seems that APL programs can be represented entirely in Unicode - which makes sense, bu…