Re: Quick survey of Apple symbol fonts (in context of the Wingding/Webding proposal)

From: Petr Tomasek <tomasek_at_etf.cuni.cz>
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 21:54:49 +0200

On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 09:03:38AM -0700, Doug Ewell wrote:
> Andrew West <andrewcwest at gmail dot com> replied to Michael Everson:
>
> >> I think that having encoded symbols for control characters (which we
> >> already have for some of them) is no bad thing, and the argument
> >> about "too many characters" is not compelling, as there are only some
> >> dozens of these characters encoded, not thousands and thousands or
> >> anything.
> >
> > I oppose encoding graphic clones of non-graphic characters on
> > principle, not because of how many there are.
>
> I agree with Michael about a lot of things, and this isn't going to be
> one of them. The main arguments I am seeing in favor of encoding are:
>
> 1. Graphic symbols for control characters are needed so writers can
> write about the control characters themselves using plain text.
>
> I don't think there's any end to where this can go. As Martin said,
> eventually you'd need a meta-meta-character to talk about the
> meta-character, and then it's not just a size problem, but an
> infinite-looping problem.

Could you point a case where such a "meta-meta..." characters could be
used? I see that there is a lot of technical literature / documentation /
et cetera where one would use a visible representation of invisible character.
I don't really see a reason why should someone need a visible "representation"
of already visible glyph.

> 3. There aren't that many of them.
>
> We regularly dismiss arguments of the form "But there's lots of room for
> these in Unicode" when someone proposes to encode something that
> shouldn't be there. I don't see this as any different.

Well, what about adding just ONE more "escaping" character that
would make the following control code point be displayed?

P.T.

-- 
Petr Tomasek <http://www.etf.cuni.cz/~tomasek>
Jabber: butrus_at_jabbim.cz
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Received on Fri Jul 15 2011 - 14:56:49 CDT

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