Reference glyphs of musical accidentals quarter sharp and quarter flat

[Asmus Freytag]

It's not only about whether users know what a variation selector is or 
is not.

Use of a variation selector for two shapes implies that they are the 
*same symbol*. For something like slanted vs. upright integrals, it's 
easy to assert that they are the same symbol and not two symbols that 
represent the same concept. Hence the use of variation selectors.

For other concepts, there are often multiple symbols representing them. 
Pound, for example, is abbreviated with a ligated lb that has it's own 
character code, but also with # on occasion. It would have been 
exceedingly disingenuous to make the lb ligature a variant of the #.

Just because some concepts map 1:1 to symbols it's not a sufficient 
condition for suggesting the use of variation selector. Anytime where 
symbol shapes show significant deviation, the presumption ought to be 
that we are looking at two symbols for the same concept, which both 
deserve to be encoded.

A./

On 1/3/2024 9:11 AM, Doug Ewell via Unicode wrote:
> I personally support Kirk Miller's proposal to add the more commonly 
> used symbols as separate characters, rather than complicating the 
> encoding by adding variation selectors to change the glyph to 
> something quite different.
>
> We don't always realize it, but ordinary users generally don't know 
> anything about variation selectors.
>
> —Doug
>
>
> Sent via the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra 5G, an AT&T 5G smartphone
> Get Outlook for Android <https://aka.ms/AAb9ysg>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Unicode <unicode-bounces at corp.unicode.org> on behalf of Marius 
> Spix via Unicode <unicode at corp.unicode.org>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, January 3, 2024 9:09:14 AM
> *To:* unicode at corp.unicode.org <unicode at corp.unicode.org>
> *Subject:* Reference glyphs of musical accidentals quarter sharp and 
> quarter flat
> Hi,
>
> I just noted that the reference glyphs for
>
> U+1D132 MUSICAL SYMBOL QUARTER TONE SHARP
>
> and
>
> U+1D133 MUSICAL SYMBOL QUARTER TONE FLAT
>
> on the code chart are very unusual. In the standard notation, the
> quarter sharp is represented by U+266F with only one downstroke and the
> quarter flat by a mirrored version of U+266D MUSIC FLAT SIGN (or as a
> variant of U+266D with a stroke). Please find the attached image for
> reference.
>
> I had a look at the mailing list and there was already a suggestion by
> Johnny Farraj in 2015, by Markus Scherer in 2018 and by Gavin Jared Bala
> and Kirk Miller in 2023 (request L2/23-276). The letter also includes
> the currently missing characters for three-quarter sharp and
> three-quarter flat, two characters I also see an urgent need for.
>
> Howerver, in contrast to that request, I propose to unify two suggested
> characters with existing ones and change the reference glyph instead of
> encoding a new character instead.
>
> U+1D1ED MUSICAL SYMBOL REVERSED FLAT (requested) = U+1D133 MUSICAL
> SYMBOL QUARTER TONE FLAT (existing)
> U+1D1EB MUSICAL SYMBOL HALF SHARP (requested) = U+1D133 MUSICAL SYMBOL
> QUARTER TONE FLAT (existing)
>
> The stroked variant of the quarter flat (which does not appear in
> the proposal of Gavin Jared Bala and Kirk Miller, but can be found in
> several pieces) could be obtained by combining U+1D132 MUSICAL SYMBOL
> QUARTER TONE SHARP with a variation selector (e. g. U+FE00).
>
> What do you think?
>
> Best regards,
>
> Marius

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