There are several symbols and characters that I can't find in the
information on the unicode.org web site. If they are not in the standard,
and if I can elicit some consensus that they should be, then I plan to
propose them. If they are (or if they have already been rejected), I want
to find out now before I spend any more time on it. I'm a newbie at
Unicode, but I have a fair understanding of the natural science user
community of which I'm a member.
Here they are:
Miscellaneous symbol BIENNIAL: similar to U+2609 SUN, but with two dots
horizontally aligned. Used by botanists, horticulturists, and gardeners.
(SUN is the symbol for annual and JUPITER for perennial.)
Miscellaneous symbol HERMAPHRODITE: A combination of U+2640 FEMALE SIGN and
U+2642 MALE SIGN; the circle is shared. Used by entomologists and perhaps
others (U+263F MERCURY is used by entomologists to indicate virgin insects;
the classicist in me shudders, but that is their practice).
Letterlike symbol CAMBRIAN: Latin capital letter C with horizontal stroke.
Used by geologists to designate the Cambrian Period and distinguish it from
the Carboniferous (C) and Cretaceous (K). Considering all the letters with
strokes, I'm surprised not to find this one.
Letterlike symbol TRIASSIC: Latin capital letter T with a half-height Latin
capital letter R sharing the vertical stroke. Used by geologists to
distinguish from Tertiary (T).
There is also a symbol for Pennsylvanian, a North American subdivision of
the Caboniferous (to distinguish it from the Permian, P), but I don't
remember what the glyph looks like and I don't have a reference at hand.
There are also two symbols that could be made with combining diacritics,
one well and one not so well. The first is X-BAR, the symbol for arithmetic
mean. I imagine this has already been settled; could someone point me to a
web reference?
The second is a symbol that might be called V-DOT, Latin capital letter V
with dot above, that is used by some physiologists to indicate the volume
of a gas used or produced. I imagine that U+0307 COMBINING DOT ABOVE would
normally be sized to fit over a lower case letter, so that V-DOT would not
look right by using it. But I'm unclear on the implementation of the
combining diacritics. Has V-DOT been proposed? What is the working
philosophy on things like this?
Thanks in advance for your comments.
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Curtis Clark http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
Biological Sciences Department Voice: (909) 869-4062
California State Polytechnic University FAX: (909) 869-4078
Pomona CA 91768-4032 USA jcclark@csupomona.edu
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