At 16:07 16-05-2000 +0100, J%ORG KNAPPEN wrote:
>Philosophical aside: _All_ characters in UNicode are human inventions,
>or gimmicks, as you say. You cannot "find" any character in nature (like
>finding a chemical element or a new biological species).
Of course they're all human inventions (though many started as images of
objects seen in nature).
> And yes,
>"successfulness" is _the_ criterion for inclusion in UNicode.
How successful is this one? I have never seen it. Were you to show it to me
without telling me what it is, I would not recognize it. What does it look
like anyway? I am assuming it is the letter 'L' in a circle, but I am not
sure.
I do recognize the word "copyleft". I would not be surprised to see it in
the next edition of Merriam-Webster's, for example. But until this thread
started, I was not even aware that a symbol for it existed.
How do you measure success? Should the in-sync music group come up with a
symbol, do we include it in Unicode? They are very successful. Today.
Tomorrow, some other group will be successful.
Is this copyleft symbol truly successful? Is it a symbol many people
recognize? Will it be a symbol many people will recognize a couple of years
from now? How about a century from now? (We do expect Unicode to still be
around then, don't we.) I bet more people recognize a double arch, and we
are not considering its inclusion.
I think someone has it reversed here. Not proposing a symbol that is widely
recognized and used, but a symbol he wants to become widely recognized
because of its inclusion in Unicode. A personal agenda. Or a marketing ploy.
I don't think Unicode should include the symbol for every political party
in the world, or for every vociferous discontent. Should we include the
logo of 700 Club? Moral Majority? Soto Gakkai? Metallica? George W. Bush?
Miami Dolphins? We'd have to go for 64 bits quite soon...
This is not about philosophy. For example, I am a Democrat, but would not
dream about proposing the inclusion of a donkey in Unicode. Yet, it has
been the symbol of the Democratic Party in the US for over a 100 years.
Maybe someday it (copyleft, not the donkey <g>) will become a universaly
recognized symbol deserving a permanent inclusion. Only time can tell. But,
IMHO, that time has not arrived. Let's not rush this!
Adam
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:21:02 EDT