What's the process for proposing a symbol in the Unicode table?

[Peter Constable]

Hi, Freek

I was responding to a general principle being put forth by William. The only concern I was expressing in regards to krul was the application of William's principle as an argument for encoding krul.

If it's clear that a character is an element of text content with an active user community, then existing font implementations can contribute to a proposal for encoding. But the rational he was suggesting implied that any graphic symbol that users might want to place on a page warranted encoding so that the symbol can be implemented in fonts. UTC will not buy that.

Others have given useful suggestions for what might provide helpful evidence in an encoding proposal. The mention of users finding workarounds to display something _similar_ in text brought to mind the proposal for encoding the Bitcoin currency symbol: UTC found helpful evidence showing that users were interchanging text using characters that were similar to the currency symbol, enough that the intended meaning might be understood _in context_, but not the same and misinterpreted when not in context.


Peter

From: Freek Dijkstra <freek at macfreek.nl>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2024 4:11 PM
To: Peter Constable <pgcon6 at msn.com>; William_J_G Overington <wjgo_10009 at btinternet.com>; unicode at corp.unicode.org
Subject: Re: What's the process for proposing a symbol in the Unicode table?

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your references. However, I'm a bit confused with your argument. Are you talking about the krul symbol or about icons in general in the discussion with William?

I can't find the word "icon" in the referred chapter 1 of Unicode 15.0, so I assume you refer to this text in the document:


Note, however, that the Unicode Standard does not encode idiosyncratic, personal, novel, or private-use characters, nor does it encode logos or graphics.

In case you refer to the "krul" character I want to propose: that is neither an icon nor a personal or private-use character, nor a logo, nor a graphics. At least not in the sence that it is not a graphical representation of a physical object (like all examples I see on the home page of https://fontawesome.com/icons).

If your argument is referring to the general use case, my apologies. I do not have any opinion about that.

With kind regards,
Freek Dijkstra
On 22-02-2024 20:07, Peter Constable via Unicode wrote:
> in practice an end user is likely to want to introduce the krul character from a font. So encoding the krul character in regular Unicode would be helpful to end users and in my opinion being helpful to end users and consumers is what is important in encoding decisions.

By this line of reasoning, every icon in any symbol font, such as Font Awesome<https://fontawesome.com/icons> would be a candidate for encoding. UTC has already explicitly decided against that argument for encoding. Moreover, the successful, widespread use of fonts like Font Awesome clearly demonstrates that encoding in Unicode is not necessary for users to easily use graphic symbols in content.

The Unicode Standard encodes characters, where "character" is understood to mean an element of textual content and the encoding is intended for purposes of text processing. Not every graphic element qualifies for encoding simply because it can be presented using a font and placed in a text frame of a DTP application.

Cf. https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode15.0.0/ch01.pdf



Peter

From: Unicode <unicode-bounces at corp.unicode.org><mailto:unicode-bounces at corp.unicode.org> On Behalf Of William_J_G Overington via Unicode
Sent: Monday, February 19, 2024 5:54 AM
To: unicode at corp.unicode.org<mailto:unicode at corp.unicode.org>
Subject: Re: What's the process for proposing a symbol in the Unicode table?


I wonder if the encoding rules are no longer fit for purpose.



The encoding process should be to be helpful to consumers, not to lead to an agreement to restrict progress.



I get the impression - and if I have got it wrong please correct me - that if one were using the krul character in a desktop publishing program that the likely scenario is that there is a large rectangular text frame filling most of the page and containing text in the Dutch language, in, say, 14 point, and there is in the right margin, near the lower edge of the page, a small rectangular text frame into which the krul character is inserted, quite possibly at a larger size than the other text, at, say, 36 point or 48 point.



Thus the krul character is not within a line of running text involving other characters as well as itself.



I say that the fact that the krul character is not within a line of running text involving other characters as well as itself should not go against the encoding of the krul character as a regular Unicode character.



This is because, in practice an end user is likely to want to introduce the krul character from a font. So encoding the krul character in regular Unicode would be helpful to end users and in my opinion being helpful to end users and consumers is what is important in encoding decisions.



William Overington



Monday 19 February 2024





-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://corp.unicode.org/pipermail/unicode/attachments/20240223/6e6ed83f/attachment.htm>