Purpose of and rationale behind Go Markers U+2686 to U+2689

[Andrew West]

On 18 March 2016 at 23:49, Garth Wallace <gwalla at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Correction: the 2-digit pairs would require 19 characters. There would
> be no need for a left half circle enclosed digit one, since the
> enclosed numbers 10–19 are already encoded. This would only leave
> enclosed 20 as a potential confusable. There would also be no need for
> a left third digit zero, saving one code point if the thirds are not
> unified with the halves, so there would be 29 thirds.
>
> And just to clarify, there would have to be separate half cirlced and
> negative half circled digits. So that would be 96 characters
> altogether, or 58 if left and right third-circles are unified with
> their half-circle equivalents.  Not counting ideographic numbers.

Thanks for your suggestion, I have added two new options to my draft
proposal, one based on your suggestion (60 characters: 10 left, 10
middle and 10 right for normal and negative circles) and one more
verdyesque (four enclosing circle format characters).  To be honest, I
don't think the UTC will go for either of these options, but I doubt
they will be keen to accept any of the suggested options.

> This may not work very well for ideographic numbers though. In the
> examples, they appear to be written vertically within their circles
> (AFAICT none of the moves in those diagrams are numbered 100 or above,
> although some are hard to read).

I have now added an example with circled ideographic numbers greater
than 100.  See Fig. 13 in

http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Unicode/GoNotation.pdf

In this example, numbers greater than 100 are written in two columns
within the circle, with hundreds on the right.

Andrew