A sign/abbreviation for "magister"

Marcel Schneider via Unicode unicode at unicode.org
Fri Nov 2 08:47:24 CDT 2018


On 01/11/2018 22:56, Richard Wordingham via Unicode wrote:
> On Thu, 01 Nov 2018 18:23:05 +0100
> "Janusz S. Bień via Unicode" <unicode at unicode.org> wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, Nov 01 2018 at  8:43 -0700, Asmus Freytag via Unicode wrote:
> 
>>> I don't think it's a joke to recognize that there is a continuum
As a sidenote: I remember something called the "continuum bias" but
turn out unable to retrieve a relevant page on the internet.
>>> here and that there is no line that can be drawn which is based on
>>> straightforward principles. This is a pattern that keeps surfacing
>>> the deeper you look at character coding questions.
>>
>> Looks like you completely missed my point. Nobody ever claimed that
>> reproducing all variations in manuscripts is in scope of Unicode, so
>> whom do you want to convince that it is not?
> 
> I think the counter-claim is that one will never be able to encode all
> the meaning-conveying distinctions of text in Unicode.

Much is already done using variation selectors, so I can easily figure out
that UTC will allow one of the 200+ already encoded variation selectors to
be defined as directing the rendering engine to add a double line below a
superscript abbreviation indicator, and another one to add a single line,
according to mainstream ordinal indicators having one or zero underlines
depending on the typeface, and NUMERO SIGN showing currently two lines
like the "Magister" abbreviation on the Polish postcard.

Another option would be using the variation selector scheme to make any
letter an abbreviation indicator needing appropriate display in superscript
plus zero through two underlines. Personally I wouldn’t favor this scheme
for Latin abbreviations, given using preformatted superscripts is most
straightforward.

Best regards,

Marcel


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