<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div dir="ltr"></div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">While we’re on this topic, I’d like to interfere with the need to encode a distinctive negation sign used in the Bakhshali manuscript, a mathematical treatise written in the Sharada script:</div><div dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><a href="https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2013/13080-sharada-bakhshali-minus.pdf">https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2013/13080-sharada-bakhshali-minus.pdf</a><br></div><div dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Obviously, using the common ‘+’ for indicating negation in plain text does not capture the semantic intent of the Sharada ‘+’.</div><div dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div></div><div dir="ltr"><br><blockquote type="cite">On Oct 29, 2022, at 9:19 PM, Gabriel Tellez via Unicode <unicode@corp.unicode.org> wrote:<br><br></blockquote></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><span style="font-family:Candara">interestingly enough, one of the sources cited for the Wikipedia article actually has a mapping to U+203E (spacing overline). </span></blockquote><div> </div><div>You mean... it's contested?!?!</div></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">These characters were in Unicode from very early on. Unlike some of the later additions there is no link to a particular citation "in the wild". Instead, the original repertoire collected a superset of then existing character sets in reasonably wide usage. If any of their members violated Unicode encoding principles, they were added as compatibility characters (to facilitate round trip), otherwise as ordinary characters.</blockquote><br class="gmail-Apple-interchange-newline"><div>Compatibility characters from what set? <br></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">APL contents itself with U+207B SUPERSCRIPT MINUS</blockquote><div><br></div><div>No? Other then on one Wikipedia Page, most places I looked (including the APL wiki) used ¯ U+00AF MACRON.</div><div><div></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Oct 29, 2022 at 8:18 PM Mark E. Shoulson via Unicode <<a href="mailto:unicode@corp.unicode.org">unicode@corp.unicode.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">The APL language used a high-minus for negative numbers and a normal <br>
hyphen-minus for the operator, monadic or dyadic. The high-minus was <br>
syntactically part of the number, while the regular minus operated on a <br>
number (which would affect its precedence.) Come to think of it, when <br>
they were teaching us negative numbers in grade school I think my math <br>
book initially used a high-minus sign and then introduced the concept <br>
that negation was an operation that can be done to numbers and from then <br>
on used the regular minus sign.<br>
<br>
Non-typographically, Lojban mathematical syntax (mekso) distinguishes <br>
{vu'u}, the subtraction operator, from {ni'u}, the negative-number <br>
indicator. The latter is syntactically considered a *digit*, while the <br>
former is an operator.<br>
<br>
Unicode has a long history of tolerating the typographic weirdness of <br>
APL (all those APL symbols). That there isn't an APL high-minus sign <br>
already would indicate to me that APL contents itself with U+207B <br>
SUPERSCRIPT MINUS and that's Just Fine.<br>
<br>
~mark<br>
<br>
On 10/28/22 18:10, Doug Ewell via Unicode wrote:<br>
> Gabriel Tellez wrote:<br>
><br>
>> Is superscript minus use for this?<br>
> Is *anything* used for this, outside of the TI-83 and TI-84 machines, other than an ordinary minus sign or hyphen-minus?<br>
><br>
> There are actual mathematics experts on this list, but my understanding is that normal mathematical notation—as used both by experts and the general public—uses the same symbol for both unary and binary minus. The TI calculators may have distinguished between the two to make input or internal parsing easier.<br>
><br>
> --<br>
> Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Lakewood, CO, US | <a href="http://ewellic.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">ewellic.org</a><br>
><br>
</blockquote></div>
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