Pictographic zodiacal symbols

[Harriet Riddle]

Indeed, the zodiac pictographs that were previously missing were deliberately added in Unicode 8.0 (the zodiac symbols were already included).[1]

(A pictograph for Ophiuchus remains absent, but thirteen-month zodiac is a bit obscure in practice anyway.)

Another interesting thing to note is that the au-by-KDDI emoji set actually initially used pictographic zodiac signs, later changing them to the zodiac symbols for better compatibility with other vendors' emoji sets.[2]  These were initially unified to the Unicode zodiac symbols along with the other vendors' zodiac symbols (see e.g. `EmojiSources.txt`)[3], so the additions of emoji pictographs in Unicode 8.0 arguably count as disunifications.

(Another outlying case is 🦀, which was one of the characters disunified in Unicode 8.0 having been unified with ♋ in Unicode 6.0, but where 🦀 and ♋ already had separate code points in the GMail emoji private use area (U+FE1E3 and U+FE02E respectively), just not in any of the JCarrier vendors' private use areas.)

[1] https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/tr51-3-archive.html#Faces_Hands_Zodiac
[2] https://www.au.com/content/dam/au-com/mobile/service/emoji/pdf/taiohyo_03.pdf
[3] https://www.unicode.org/Public/UCD/latest/ucd/EmojiSources.txt

________________________________________
From: Unicode <unicode-bounces at corp.unicode.org> on behalf of Marius Spix via Unicode <unicode at corp.unicode.org>
Sent: 12 August 2024 08:55
To: unicode at corp.unicode.org <unicode at corp.unicode.org>; as at signographie.de <as at signographie.de>
Subject: Aw: Re: Pictographic zodiacal symbols
 
All these zodiacs can be represented with existing characters:
 
🐏
🐂
👫
🦀
🦁
👩
⚖️
🦂
🏹
🐐
🧜‍♂️
🐟 / 🎏
 
Gesendet: Montag, 12. August 2024 um 02:59 Uhr
Von: "Asmus Freytag via Unicode" <unicode at corp.unicode.org>
An: unicode at corp.unicode.org
Betreff: Re: Pictographic zodiacal symbols
There's arguably a distinction between symbols and pictographs, even if both signify the same concept.
 
This is different from the case two different sets of pictographs or two different sets of symbolic notation.
 
Although, even in those cases it is useful to consider the question: can one of them be substituted for the other with the reader experiencing the choice as stylistic?
 
A./
 
On 8/10/2024 3:48 PM, Leo Broukhis via Unicode wrote:
What's the semantic difference between the two sets? Without it, it's just different fonts.
 
Leo
 
On Fri, Jul 19, 2024 at 2:00 AM A. Stötzner via Unicode <unicode at corp.unicode.org> wrote:
 
Besides the simple typographic set of 12 zodiac characters there is a tradition of another set, consisting of pictographic symbols of the 12 zodiac signs, which also play a role in typography (~ 16th c. onwards)
Has this set been proposed for encoding at any time in the past?
 
greetings,
Andreas Stötzner
 
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Andreas Stötzner
Gestaltung · Archivpflege · Fontentwicklung
Klauflügelweg 21 · 88400 Biberach a.d. Riß
0176-86823396 · as at signographie.de
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