Position of the registered sign

[Doug Ewell]

Ivan Panchenko wrote:

> The registered sign (®, U+00AE) is already shown in superscript in
> some typefaces and on the baseline in others. [...]
>
> How about standardizing the position?

Even with the expansion in scope of Unicode over the years, details of font design like this have continued to remain out of scope, and I hope will continue to do so.

Are there instances in which the semantic meaning of ®, or for that matter ©, differs depending on whether the symbol is small and raised versus large and centered? If there are not, then this is a matter of judgment and taste, not character identity, which is all Unicode should care about here.

It is not like the question of simple versus complex letterforms for Latin ‘a’ or ‘g’, because a use case (IPA) was found where the exact shape of the letter does matter. It is more like debating whether the tail of Latin ‘Q’ should extend below the baseline or not.

These characters have been around a long time, long before Unicode or computer fonts. Typeface designers have the right to design them in a way that suits the surrounding text. (That said, I do not understand the logic of designing the glyphs for © and ® differently — looking at you, Segoe UI and Calibri — but it is still not Unicode’s business to legislate this.)

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Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Lakewood, CO, US | ewellic.org