Ah the power of emoji! To encompass even science and mythology!

[William_J_G Overington via Unicode]

Asmus Freytag wrote:  
    
> Philippe,
      
> thank you for your earnest efforts at explaining away a joke.
      
> I'm sure I'm speaking for the assembled congregation in applauding you for your tireless energy in setting the record straight.
      
Well, as Asmus is purporting to speak for other people, I write to state my own opinion.

I enjoyed Philippe's two posts thus far on this topic.

They caused me to think.

Philippe's idea for a COMBINING SHADOW character is a good one. I like it. How about U+20F1 as the code point.

There is an interesting new document in the Unicode Technical Committee Document Register.

http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17304-moon-var.pdf

That is about the moon symbols.

There is an interesting section entitled "Leaning (lit part of the) Moon".

I am thinking that if one had after the moon symbol and before any variation selector a two character sequence of a U+200D ZERO WIDTH JOINER character followed by a character from the set

{U+24EA CIRCLED DIGIT ZERO, U+2460 CiRCLED DIGIT ONE .. U+2470 CIRCLED NUMBER SEVENTEEN}

then a specific lean, in 10 degree steps clockwise, could be specified.

For example, ZWJ followed by U+2462 CIRCLED DIGIT THREE would indicate a lean of 30 degrees clockwise.

Yet I am unsure as to whether encoding it like that would both encompass every possibility needed yet also not encode situations that could not exist astronomically.

So, I put forward the idea of the ZWJ followed by a circled digit or a circled number so as to initiate discussion of what would be the best way to encode all of the various situations that could occur astronomically.

Best regards,

William Overington

Thursday 24 August 2017