L2/11-322

Source:	Eric Muller
Date:	August 2, 2011
Subject: On the playing cards

This is following the discussion we had this morning in the UTC, when
we discussed L2/11-216.

Playing cards
-------------

Consider a discussion of a card game that includes the playing card
characters, e.g. U+1F0B1 PLAYING CARD ACE OF HEART as well as related
ordinary text such as "player 1 then opened at heart."

If the meaning of U+1F0B1 is that it could be hearts or roses, it is
then possible that U+1F0B1 will be rendered by a glyph that shows a
rose, and there will be a serious disconnect with the ordinary text;
many readers will be confused, because they will not connect the
rose symbol (on the playing card) with the word "heart" (in the
ordinary text).

Relying on a font selection to achieve a consistent display is a bit
problematic in an open world. For example, search engines probably do
not have access to font information in their indices, or cannot always
deliver the font attached to the indexed text along with the search
results.

Note that the problem is not strictly aligned with "regular" playing
cards vs. minor arcana of tarot; indeed the scenario above is
constructed entirely using "regular" playing cards.

I think we have two options.

1. Each precise suit gets individually encoded. This means two sets of
characters, one for heart and one for roses, and similarly for the
other "suits".

2. We stay with the four ambiguous suits we currently have and use
variation sequences when it is important to disambiguate.

Tarot Cards
-----------

In addition to the suit variations in playing cards, we also have the
minor arcana of the tarot decks.

The two options above extend naturally:

1'. Each tarot suit gets invidually encoded.

2'. The tarot suites are represented using the existing four ambiguous suits,
and we use additional variation sequences for the tarot suits.


I do think it is necessary for the UTC to choose one of the two
options and that status quo is not an option. I don't really care
between the two.


Eric.