On the possibility of encoding webdings in Unicode (from Re: square bullets added to unicode.)

From: William_J_G Overington (wjgo_10009@btinternet.com)
Date: Wed Jan 26 2011 - 04:46:08 CST

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    Christopher Fynn <chris.fynn@gmail.com> wrote:
     
    > Would you include symbols in Wingdings 2, Wingdings 3, and Webdings as well as those in the original Wingdings?
    >
    > - Chris
     
    An interesting consideration in relation to webdings would be that of the intellectual property rights of the designs.
     
    Webdings has some very stylish graphic art, such as the park glyph that can be accessed in WordPad using a letter P. I found the name park for the glyph by looking in the font using FontCreator 5.6.
     
    Looking in the font using FontCreator 5.6, I also found the following.
     
    Copyright (c) 1997 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
     
    Webdings is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
     
    Also, the following.
     
    quote
     
    Designed in 1997 as a collaborative work between Microsoft's Vincent Connare and top Monotype designers Sue Lightfoot, Ian Patterson and Geraldine Wade. The images are intended for web designers who wish to include live fonts as a fast way of rendering graphics. Webdings is the latest member of Microsoft's Webfonts. Design coordination by Vincent Connare. Image designs by Vincent Connare, Ian Patterson, Sue Lightfoot and Geraldine Wade. Web and design consultation by Simon Daniels. TrueType hinting by Vincent Connare. Completed April 29, 1997.
     
    end quote
     
    If some or all of the webdings glyphs were to become encoded into regular Unicode, would that only be possible with the explicit intellectual property rights permission of Microsoft? If Microsoft did choose to give such permission, would an encoding into regular Unicode be for the glyph design that Microsoft has used or would it be a matter of having a codepoint and a general description open to interpretation.
     
    For example,
     
    would it be something like
     
    U+1XXXX MICROSOFT WEBDING GLYPH PARK
     
    or would it be something like
     
    U+1XXXX GRASS WITH TREE AND PATH
     
    so that the webding park glyph was regarded as just one possible glyph for the character?
     
    William Overington
     
    26 January 2011
     

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