Re: U+25CA LOZENGE - why is it in the "Mac OS Roman" character set (and therefore widespread in current fonts)?

On 13 Aug 2012, at 14:04, Karl Pentzlin wrote:

> Am Montag, 13. August 2012 um 14:24 schrieb Michael Everson:
>
> ME> On 13 Aug 2012, at 12:37, Karl Pentzlin wrote:
>>> Why is U+25CA ◊ LOZENGE in the "Mac OS Roman" character set (at 0xD7 = 215, and therefore contained in several common fonts like Arial or Times New Roman)?
> ME> Because they put it there in 1984.
>
> My intent is to get information *why* the character was considered that important at that time to be included into an 8-bit character set with its limited space.

Good luck?

> The problem I am confronted with is that this character shares its German name "Raute" with the "#", and I have to
> consider any historical use of the (real) lozenge when describing the "#" in a keyboard-related German publication I have to make.

I don't think so. At http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raute_(Symbol) you will see that # is named "Doppelkreuz", and ◊ is named "Raute" and indicates "Subtotal".

> (The name "Raute" for "#" seems to derive from the International Telecommunication Union standard ITU-T E.161, which requires the name "square, or the most commonly used equivalent term in other languages" for the sign on the lower right corner of 12-key telephone keypads, which is translated into "Raute" instead of literally "Quadrat". The term "square" is also used that way in the name of U+2317 VIEWDATA SQUARE, which is a "straight #" like it is in fact shown on
> most telephone keypads.)

Again, this does not seem to make sense given the use of # and ◊ and * on that 1970 adding machine. Perhaps that was a translation error in the ITU standard; http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raute_(Symbol)#Raute_und_Doppelkreuz does address this, though I don't know if it addresses it in a satisfactory way.

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
Received on Mon Aug 13 2012 - 11:26:38 CDT