Re: Awful Unicode character names (was Re: I-Ching Hexagrams)

From: Pim Blokland (pblokland@planet.nl)
Date: Fri Apr 11 2003 - 15:55:12 EDT

  • Next message: Michael Everson: "Re: Awful Unicode character names (was Re: I-Ching Hexagrams)"

    Another candidate for for the Awful Character names would be U+0192.

    Its formal designation in the database is Latin letter small f with
    hook.
    This is OK. However, this poor little overworked character has two
    extra jobs:

    1) It doubles as the guilder (florin) sign. In fact, this use is
    more widespread than the f with hook.
    Were we to accept this use, it wouldn't just be the name that would
    have to be changed; the general category and bidirectional category
    would change as well. And of course it wouldn't have an uppercase
    equivalent mapping.
    Even the appearance would change: while the f with hook looks like,
    well, an roman f with a left hook, the guilder looks like an italic
    f. It's not the same character at all!
    Suggested info for the UnicodeData database:
    0192;GUILDER SIGN;Sc;0;ET;;;;;N;;;;;

    2) The SGML definition calls it "function of". HTML entity name:
    ƒ. It now suddenly is a mathematical character.
    In this case too, not just the name should be changed, lots of other
    categories as well. And the appearance: to differentiate from a
    normal f, function of is often written as a script-f. (The irony is
    that this is exactly how it was called in Unicode 1.0.)
    Suggested info in the UnicodeData database:
    0192;FUNCTION OF;Sm;0;ON;;;;;Y;;;;;

    You know what? It won't work. Can't cram three different characters
    into the same codepoint. Forget it...

    Pim Blokland



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