Re: Terminal Graphics Proposal

From: Kevin Bracey (kbracey@acorn.com)
Date: Thu Oct 01 1998 - 07:08:39 EDT


In message <9810010143.AA14122@unicode.org>
          Frank da Cruz <fdc@watsun.cc.columbia.edu> wrote:

> Sorry for the length of the following; if you're not interested,
> skip it. The intention is to bring likeminded parties out of the woodwork;
> if you are one, please contact me and we can continue the topic offline.
>
> - Frank
>

Very well put together proposal - I like it. A few comments (on the mailing
list, so keeping it short):

>
> Unicode already has a block of Control Pictures at U+2400 through U+2421,
> but (except for "NL" at U+2424) these go horizontally across the character
> cell, rather than diagonally, thus making them difficult to distinguish
> from normal alphanumeric text. A new, parallel block of C0 control
> pictures is needed in which the abbreviations are displayed diagonally.

That's a glyph variation - the Unicode Standard explicitly states that
you can use whatever preferred glyph you like for these. Indeed, IIRC,
ISO 10646-1 has considerably different suggested glyphs for these characters.

> E080 SP Space (like U+2420 but arranged diagonally)
> E081 DEL Delete (Rubout) (2-character name: DT)

These two are glyph variants of U+2420 and U+2421.

> E082 LS1 Locking Shift 1 (ISO name for SO)
> E083 LS0 Locking Shift 0 (ISO name for SI)

Maybe these two could be considered glyph variants of U+240E and u+240F?
Probably not, I suppose.

> Hexadecimal byte values, 2 hex digits each. Like display controls, but for
> all 256 8-bit byte values, showing the byte code in hexadecimal, rather
> than the (context-dependent) name. For hex debugging (in terminal
> emulators, line monitors, protocol analyzers, etc). Should be arranged
> diagonally within the character cell as shown in Figure 5.1:

Fair enough - but who are you to specify diagonality? These are just
characters with the semantic meaning "Graphic representation of octet value
xx".

> E0F0 Reverse Question Mark DEC VTxxx, Wyse, Televideo (1)

I would suggest U+FFFD for this.

-- 
Kevin Bracey, Senior Software Engineer
Acorn Computers Ltd                           Tel: +44 (0) 1223 725228
Acorn House, 645 Newmarket Road               Fax: +44 (0) 1223 725328
Cambridge, CB5 8PB, United Kingdom            WWW: http://www.acorn.co.uk/



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