From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Fri Jul 16 2010 - 03:46:36 CDT
On 16 Jul 2010, at 09:28, Christoph Päper wrote:
> There is a rupee sign encoded at U+20A8.
Yep.
> Its example glyph is a ligature ‘Rs’, i.e. roman script, thereby very Western. This is how it’s implemented in fonts, too, regardless of the scripts the font covers.
Yep.
> This sign – similar to ‘$’ – is used for several currencies in Southern Asia, the Indian rupee among them.
Yep.
> The Indian government / administration / people is not satisified with the situation. They want a new sign that
> - is exclusive to the Indian rupee (INR),
Well, a sign that is specific to the INR. They cant prevent others from using it (as $ is used).
> - “would be the Hindi alphabet Ra with two lines”,
> i.e. it should look local.
It's an amalgam of Devanagari RA and the right half of Latin R with two lines.
> Only if INR exclusiveness is vital, the currency symbol would need to obtain a codepoint of its own. Otherwise it would be a font issue to replace the ‘Rs’ ligature ‘₨’ by the new symbol, probably depending on the surrounding language and with slightly different designs for use inside the Indian scripts and other ones.
No, because that U+20AB has a decomposition to R + s and that would not apply to the new currency sign. Note that some Indian scripts have unique "RU" symbols for the rupee anyway.
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
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