New characters for Unicode (yes, it's relevant to this board)

Yoda

Many of you, well, some of you, know that I am one of the more active contributors to the Unicode Standard and that I am Irish representative to the ISO mirror committee responsible for ISO/IEC 10646. This weekend I decided to propose for encoding a number of characters missing from the standard. I would like it very much if some of you could review these, and in particular in view of the Neo-Pagan characters, let me know if you have samples of these in in-line text.

Proposal to encode Baha’i and Neo-Pagan religious symbols in the UCS http://www.evertype.com/taisce/n25xx-bahai.pdf (444K)

Proposal to encode four miscellaneous symbols in the UCS (permanent paper, handicapped, atomic power, and shamrock) http://www.evertype.com/taisce/n25xx-handicapped.pdf (489K)

Proposal to encode symbols for genealogy and gender studies in the UCS http://www.evertype.com/taisce/n25xx-gender.pdf (499K)

I really appreciate it.

silja

Hello,
I don't really know what unicode is (I only use and abuse computers, I don't claim to understand them...), but I like the symbols chosen for Neo-Paganism, especially the pentacle (five pointed star in a circle).

I think a triple moon might be more useful than the triple spiral, or ideally be great to have in addition to what you already have.

When you say "let me know if you have samples of these in in-line text.", do you mean in a book? *is clueless*

Blessed be: silja

Talliesin

Triple-moon would be something to add to the list I think, as would the triangle symbols for earth, air, fire and water (those in particular since they are very often used in in-line text). (Silja, I think in-line means that the symbol is used as a charcter, as opposed to as a picture). Some of the symbols from the Lesser Key of Solomon might also be of use, these are often used as characters in particular those that are sometimes engraved on Athamés.

You might want to look at Enochian script which I don't think is encoded despite there being an i-enochian RFC 3066 tag.

Liber 777 might have some examples of some of the glyphs you are looking for. Books of shadows are also quite likely to have them, it may be worth trying to find someone that would have several different books of shadows (historians of Wicca), perhaps the Farrars might be able to help.

I'll take a look for what I can find for those you are proposing. I have a copy of 777 so I'll start there.

Off-topic, but splitting this to another thread on another board would be confusing:

Regarding the gender-studies glyphs, could a joiner be used to create the same representation? If so you may want to justify this not being used.

Also you lack the triple-Venus of Feminist solidarity, providing the lesbian double-Venus without the triple-Venus could lead to the former being used for the latter (as it once was), and hence cause confusion.

Talliesin

Discussion of some of these characters would strictly speaking be off-topic however:

1. Discussion of the Pagan characters is very much on-topic.
2. Splitting the discussion out amongst several different boards would be confusing.
3. Many of these characters have no relevant board.
4. In the absense of a i18n board the technical boards would not be the place to discuss them. Unicode assignments are about how a character is or is not used in text by those who use them, not the technical issues of how machines do this.
5. I consider these proposals to be important and welcome Yoda seeking consultation of relevant communities.

Hence I am declaring all discussion of all of the characters in these proposals to be on-topic in this thread.

Talliesin

More thoughts:

I'm pretty sure I've seen Labrys used as an inline character by lesbian activists, queer theorists and Dianic Wiccans. I'll try to track down an example.

An argument could be made for a duplication of Lamda similar to the difference between U+03A3 (capital Sigma) and U+2211 (N-Ary Sum). Not much of an argument, but I thought I'd stick in the idea.

Yoda

Originally posted by silja
Hello,
I don't really know what unicode is [...] When you say "let me know if you have samples of these in in-line text.", do you mean in a book? *is clueless*

Unicode is a big character set that has all the letters of all the alphabets in the world in it, and has a lot of symbols. In this case, it has symbols for Christianity, Buddhism. Islam, Jainism, and Judaism, but nothing for Neo-Pagan or Baha'i. This irritates me. Hence the proposal.

In-line text would be like a smiley, used in text as a symbol with meaning. Other uses might be as bullets in a list. In-line is more compelling as a reason to encode, but I'll take what I can get.

The gods of political correctness will help to encode Neo-Pagan symbols I think.

Yoda

Originally posted by Talliesin
Triple-moon would be something to add to the list I think, as would the triangle symbols for earth, air, fire and water (those in particular since they are very often used in in-line text).

Other people I have consulted outside of Ireland have suggested the Triple Moon. As for the others, are they not already encoded?

Some of the symbols from the Lesser Key of Solomon might also be of use, these are often used as characters in particular those that are sometimes engraved on Athamés.

I don't know what these are.

You might want to look at Enochian script which I don't think is encoded despite there being an i-enochian RFC 3066 tag.

So far we have determined that Enochian is just a cypher for the Latin alphabet. The RFC 3066 code is a language tag, not a script.

I'll take a look for what I can find for those you are proposing. I have a copy of 777 so I'll start there.

Thanks.

Regarding the gender-studies glyphs, could a joiner be used to create the same representation? If so you may want to justify this not being used.

Certainly not. That's just pseudo-coding anyway.

Also you lack the triple-Venus of Feminist solidarity, providing the lesbian double-Venus without the triple-Venus could lead to the former being used for the latter (as it once was), and hence cause confusion.

Hm. Is the triple Venus really used today? Anyway I'd want to see it in use. "Feminist solidarity" seems less compelling to me than LGBT identifiers.

Yoda

Originally posted by Talliesin
More thoughts:

I'm pretty sure I've seen Labrys used as an inline character by lesbian activists, queer theorists and Dianic Wiccans. I'll try to track down an example.

Do. (That's the butterfly axes, is it?)

An argument could be made for a duplication of Lamda similar to the difference between U+03A3 (capital Sigma) and U+2211 (N-Ary Sum).

No, the Greek letter suffices nicely, and N-Ary Summation is bigger than a capital sigma.

Talliesin

Yep, labrys is the butterfly axe. I agree about lamda (and similarly about possible suggestions for asterisk and dagger in genealogy) just thought I'd add it in as a suggestion.

I haven't had a chance to look for any of these, but I will, promise.

Talliesin

Originally posted by Yoda
Other people I have consulted outside of Ireland have suggested the Triple Moon. As for the others, are they not already encoded?

Do you know the code points for these? I was looking for them a while back (can't remember why).

I don't know what these are.

I'll mail you scans soon. I'm trying to track down examples of those you are proposing, so I'll mail you them together (or if I fail to find the examples I'll just mail you the Solomon characters).

So far we have determined that Enochian is just a cypher for the Latin alphabet. The RFC 3066 code is a language tag, not a script.

Ah! It seemed strange to me that there was a language code without a relevant script, but yes it is pretty much just a cypher now I think of it.

Hm. Is the triple Venus really used today? Anyway I'd want to see it in use. "Feminist solidarity" seems less compelling to me than LGBT identifiers.

I've only seen it in art-work, not inline. My thinking is primarily that since the triple form was invented specifically to differentiate from the double that including one and not the other might re-introduce the ambiguity that led to that invention.

Yoda

Originally posted by Talliesin
Do you know the code points for these? I was looking for them a while back (can't remember why).

You will have to remind me what they look like.

I'll mail you scans soon. I'm trying to track down examples of those you are proposing, so I'll mail you them together (or if I fail to find the examples I'll just mail you the Solomon characters).

Mail how? Hardcopy?

I've only seen it in art-work, not inline. My thinking is primarily that since the triple form was invented specifically to differentiate from the double that including one and not the other might re-introduce the ambiguity that led to that invention.

Well, I'm just not of the opinion that "the feminist sisterhood" is as valid an entity for encoding as "lesbian" "gay" "bisexual" or "transgendered" is. There's no "masculinist brotherhood" to pair with it and it is patently political (where LGBT is not).

Yoda

Find any of those samples, Talliesin?

Talliesin

Alas no. I'll keep my eyes out, but I'm very busy ATM. I did discover that I have considerably less books than I used to. I suspect my kids have "tidied" them somewhere.

I did find examples of the four triangle symbols, though you said you thought those were already encoded (they look like an upwards-pointing empty triangle, a downwards-pointing one, and then each of those with a line through them). The examples of those are in tables rather than completely inline, not sure if those would be of use to you.

Yoda

Send 'em.