RE: uppercase and lowercase numbers

From: Phillips, Addison (addison@amazon.com)
Date: Fri Feb 06 2009 - 13:57:32 CST

  • Next message: Jukka K. Korpela: "Re: uppercase and lowercase numbers"

    Not all characters have case. In fact, most scripts do not have case distinctions the way Latin text does.

    The Latin digits in the Basic Latin block are among the characters that do not have explicit case. Here they are in the Unicode Character Database:

    0030;DIGIT ZERO;Nd;0;EN;;0;0;0;N;;;;;
    0031;DIGIT ONE;Nd;0;EN;;1;1;1;N;;;;;
    0032;DIGIT TWO;Nd;0;EN;;2;2;2;N;;;;;
    0033;DIGIT THREE;Nd;0;EN;;3;3;3;N;;;;;
    0034;DIGIT FOUR;Nd;0;EN;;4;4;4;N;;;;;
    0035;DIGIT FIVE;Nd;0;EN;;5;5;5;N;;;;;
    0036;DIGIT SIX;Nd;0;EN;;6;6;6;N;;;;;
    0037;DIGIT SEVEN;Nd;0;EN;;7;7;7;N;;;;;
    0038;DIGIT EIGHT;Nd;0;EN;;8;8;8;N;;;;;
    0039;DIGIT NINE;Nd;0;EN;;9;9;9;N;;;;;

    Compare to a Latin letter:

    0041;LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A;Lu;0;L;;;;;N;;;;0061;

    The distinction you see on the Adobe website is stylistic. The underlying encoded characters for both "uppercase" and "lowercase" numbers are the same.

    Addison

    Addison Phillips
    Globalization Architect -- Lab126

    Internationalization is not a feature.
    It is an architecture.

    > -----Original Message-----
    > From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org]
    > On Behalf Of John (Eljay) Love-Jensen
    > Sent: Friday, February 06, 2009 9:59 AM
    > To: unicode@unicode.org
    > Subject: uppercase and lowercase numbers
    >
    > Hi everyone,
    >
    > Are U+00030 through U+00039 uppercase or lowercase numbers? Or
    > neither / unspecified?
    >
    > If uppercase, are there lowercase number codepoints?
    >
    > If lowercase, are there uppercase number codepoints?
    >
    > If neither / unspecified, are there other ranges intended for
    > uppercase number and lowercase number codepoints? Even if it is
    > the private use area.
    >
    > I gave the glyphs in the Unicode specification a browse, and did
    > not see whether-or-not there were such ranges. Maybe I missed it.
    > Hence, this message.
    >
    > Examples of uppercase and lowercase numbers:
    > http://www.adobe.com/type/topics/info5.html
    >
    > Thanks,
    > --Eljay
    >
    >

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