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<p>Hello, Martin, and welcome to Unicode:<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2024-08-13 13:04, Martin Vahi via
Unicode wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:96a84680-9125-4608-8d7a-8828c582ea63@softf1.com">
<br>
Dear readers of this list,
<br>
<br>
I know that there is literally a shit emoji character, but when I
tried
<br>
to find characters for electronic components like diodes,
capacitors,
<br>
resistors, radio lamps, etc. then I failed to find any. The same
with
<br>
XOR gate, OR gate, AND gate, MUX, DEMUX, etc.
…a wish for some <br>
characters that at least in some combined
<br>
manner would allow to draw electrical schematics in console
windows
<br>
does not look too extreme to me. Some reference to some mail
archive,
<br>
where that topic has been discussed in the past, would be helpful.
<br>
</blockquote>
<p>I am not aware of a discussion of encoding symbols for electrical
schematics in Unicode. I am however aware of numerous proposals to
encode various graphical symbols in general in Unicode. Those
proposals, and the arguments against them, are so common that
there are sections of The Unicode Standard and of the Emoji
process which describe what gets encoded and what does not. <br>
</p>
<p>Consider (re-)reading the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>The Core Specification of The Unicode Standard, section 2.2
Unicode Design Principles
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode15.0.0/ch02.pdf"><https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode15.0.0/ch02.pdf></a>.
Consider especially the principles "Plain text" and "Characters,
not glyphs".</li>
<li>Guidelines for Submitting Unicode® Emoji Proposals, especiall
the "Selection Factors" section
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://www.unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html#selection_factors"><https://www.unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html#selection_factors></a></li>
</ul>
<p>Some questions I would ask of anyone proposing to encode
electrical symbols in Unicode:</p>
<p>Are these symbols used in a plain text context? Do people want
to write in an email, <MUX> <NAND> <Resister 10k
Ohm> <Capacitor 10picoFarad>?</p>
<p>Do you have evidence of people using such symbols in text outside
of computer-based plain text? For instance, do you have examples
of people hand-writing text with electrical symbols mingled in the
text?</p>
<p>Do you have evidence of people trying to draw electrical
schematics in console windows? Why are those people trying to use
text drawing mechanisms instead of graphics mechanisms like SVG?</p>
<p>Overall, my reponse to <br>
</p>
<p>
<blockquote type="cite">…a wish for some characters that at least
in some combined
<br>
manner would allow to draw electrical schematics in console
windows
<br>
does not look too extreme to me.…</blockquote>
is that it does look quite extreme to me. Electrical schematics
are a two-dimensional graphical representation of an electrical
circuit. The right tool for the job is graphics, not text, it
seems to me.</p>
<p>Also, in the context of discussions about Unicode, certain words
are terms of art and their meanings matter. So,<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:96a84680-9125-4608-8d7a-8828c582ea63@softf1.com">Even
ASCII had special characters for drawing the DOS era windows in
<br>
console….<br>
</blockquote>
<p>The word "ASCII" refers to a particular character encoding
standard <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII"><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII></a>, aka
ANSI_X3.4-1968, aka ISO_646.irv:1991. It has just 128 code points.
I am not aware of any which are for drawing DOS era windows. <br>
</p>
<p>Maybe you are referring to IBM Code page 437
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437"><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437></a>, the character
set of the original IBM PC. It included ASCII plus a set of
line-drawing symbols and some icons. <br>
</p>
<p>When talking about Unicode proposals, getting the terminology
right for other encoding standards reduces confusion and speeds up
the discussion.<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:96a84680-9125-4608-8d7a-8828c582ea63@softf1.com">As a
side-note, some modern era Linux terminals allow to display
<br>
graphics, even videos, in pixel analogues called sixels.
<br>
I even have a YouTube demo video about that:
<br>
<br>
("2022 06 17 images and videos on WSL Linux Terminal",
2023_03_08)
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBLSa7X8dEY">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBLSa7X8dEY</a>
<br>
</blockquote>
<p>I have not watched this video all the way through. But the
Wikipedia article on Sixel
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel"><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel></a> seems to say that
sixels are an encoding of image data, in 6-bit units, as ASCII
characters. Terminals which display sixel-encoded image data
switch into a "sixel mode", in which they interpret the data
stream as an image rather than as text. I see no intention that
the images represented as sixels be legible together with, and
mixed together with, text content. Thus sixel encoding seems to be
a higher-level protocol which re-purposes text data channels to
transmit graphical content, and not a form of text content.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:96a84680-9125-4608-8d7a-8828c582ea63@softf1.com">
Thank You for reading my letter and
<br>
thank You for the answer(s).
<br>
<br>
Yours sincerely,
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Martin.Vahi@softf1.com">Martin.Vahi@softf1.com</a>
<br>
</blockquote>
<p>Is this the sort of answer you were looking for?<br>
</p>
<p>Best regards,</p>
—Jim DeLaHunt<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
. --Jim DeLaHunt, <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:jdlh@jdlh.com">jdlh@jdlh.com</a> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://blog.jdlh.com/">http://blog.jdlh.com/</a> (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://jdlh.com/">http://jdlh.com/</a>)
multilingual websites consultant, Vancouver, B.C., Canada</pre>
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