Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
Ar 17:51 +0200 2003/05/29, scríobh Philippe Verdy: .. I would prefer to say that Netscape 4.0 is dead, but Netscape 4.7x is not (I D'accord. (With the above I'd have to agree.) see no reason why users should continue to use versions before 4.7, as the 4.7 version fixed a lot of interoperability problems, including cross-platform compatibility with other Netscapes, plus many security fixes...) Yes. Netscape 6+ is still too new with its new operating model, and lacks the level Again - after some scary experiences with 6+ - yes, I'd have to agree. ... However the recent versions of Netscape 7+ based on the new Mozilla Gecko engine include a lot of performance enhancements in the JavaScript engine, Really? Most mail I get seems to be generated by MicroSoft Office slaves. ... Only stable parts of the development are optimized, to avoid creating unmaintainable source code. ... There you lose me, as I do not comprehend the above sentence - could you rephrase it, perhaps? mg -- Marion Gunn * EGT (Estab.1991) * http://www.egt.ie * fiosruithe/enquiries: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
From: Marion Gunn [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ar 17:51 +0200 2003/05/29, Philippe Verdy entre sur son clavier: I would prefer to say that Netscape 4.0 is dead, but Netscape 4.7x is not (I D'accord. (With the above I'd have to agree.) see no reason why users should continue to use versions before 4.7, as the 4.7 version fixed a lot of interoperability problems, including cross-platform compatibility with other Netscapes, plus many security fixes...) Yes. Netscape 6+ is still too new with its new operating model, and lacks the level Again - after some scary experiences with 6+ - yes, I'd have to agree. ... However the recent versions of Netscape 7+ based on the new Mozilla Gecko engine include a lot of performance enhancements in the JavaScript engine, Really? Most mail I get seems to be generated by MicroSoft Office slaves. I don't think we were speaking about email agents. For me the new Mozilla Gecko-based browser is great, but the mail agent is too crappy to be usable... Most of the mails I reaceive come from users of Outlook Express which is just fine for what it does (I don't speak about Outlook in the Office Suite, which is just a open hole to the system, and a huge resource drain). I'm not a slave of Office products (even if I use it because I already have a licence of it and I need something that can process the most complex Excel worksheets.) I use other word processors too. I will never buy Office XP or Office 2003 (Office 2000 is just fine for me). But my experience with OpenOffice were very deceptive (too much resource intensive) Only stable parts of the development are optimized, to avoid creating unmaintainable source code. There you lose me, as I do not comprehend the above sentence - could you rephrase it, perhaps? An application can contain a lot of performance improvements by including some stable components on which much work has been done (for example newer versions of the Xerces XML parser, and new internal data models for processing). Still there's a lot of unstable parts in the code that has knownbugs that still require a lot of work (notably the XSLT layout engine, CSS3 properties and their bindings to Javascript including security restrictions, and new integration libraries to support faster rendering such as support for DirectX on Windows within the layout engine). What is not fully optimized is the Javascript interpreter engine which was entirely rewritten to support other component integration models such as COM, Corba, Java, or synchronization and events with these components in addition to the legacy plugins model. Also in this area, the support of Unicode normalizations and transformations is quite slow and could be updated to support more recent versions of Unicode. Finally the built-in Java engine has not be tuned up specially for a good integration with the browser's usage of Java in a separate VM for its GUI interface, and all the works with skins in Mozilla was probably not a priority for Nescape 7. Nescape should have beter focused on demonstrating its capability of driing the Mozilla project to meet the indusry standards, without surcharging the browser with non critical components. Now that AOL/Time Warner has signed the final agreement with Microsoft who will give free licences of Internet Explorer for 10 years, will AOL continue to invest to maintain the Netscape browser application and helping the Mozilla project? I hope that Mozilla will be able to continue as the best reference platform for conformance to open standards such as W3C's. But here's now the risk that the W3C will be too much influenced by Microsoft's solutions. May be it's high time that the W3C adopts a more international vision of open standards, using less restrictive access rules for its decisive work groups.
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
From: Carl W. Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] It looks to me like UNCODE. Has the UN has taken a rode in globalization? Maybe the web page has no scripting but is still savvy. Wrong! You strip the very visible dot from the i letter, you also refse to see that there's a ligature between the U and N. If you look at this unique ligature, accept also the ligature between the N and i. So the trigram UNi must be considered as a whole, and a distinctive mark or symbol, unique to Unicode. This unique design belongs to the category of logos, and is used since decenials. This is a visible and important and distinctive signature of Unicode, and we should really use it (with a (tm) character as required by the logos usage policy) with its colors. This logo has nothing in common with United Nations (whose distinctive colors are white and light blue, and is almost associated with other logos representing the Earth, palms for recognition/agreement, and columbus for peace). This logo is also very distinct from other trademarks for products or registered trademarks for companies (like United Airlines, United Devices, Universal Studios...). You are making arguments against the fact that it could be read as UN, but two letters are not enough to be distinctive. Unicode cannot be dsignated by these two letters, but it can be identified by the graphic logo, which is registered and protected by its form independantly of its colors which cannot always be reproduced. However, each time it's possible, the layout should be colored with the correct color which is red in 16-colors system, or purple/dark red on 256-color systems, and purple if HighColor or TrueColor is available. For printed publications, I do think that a Pantone(tm) or CIE color was chosen by Unicode when registering the logo as a reference color that must be used with the lowest variation possible (depending on technical constraints). The web constraints generally recommend using the web palette for general usage in web pages...
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
Compliant is a problem term, as compliance is a problem concept. I believe we discussed, some months ago, the problem of claiming compliance for systems or applications, since very little (any?) software implements everything in Unicode or implements everything equally well. What would it mean to say that a website is 'Unicode compliant'? Is there any point in proclaiming a website 'Unicode compliant' if the visitor is using a browser that is *not* Unicode compliant insofar as being able to correctly display that site? It is compliant in terms of using a correct and standardised way to provide Unicode. So compliant does apply to ANY valid UTF8 :o) Compliant should mean to the user, that it doesn't break any Unicode rules. Valid UTF8 doesn't break any rules, so it is compliant. Compliant is pretty perfect for what you mean, I'd think. Also, you can apply this term to software, but in a different sense. -- Theodore H. Smith - Macintosh Consultant / Contractor. My website: www.elfdata.com/
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
there are still (even more) browsers that do not display UTF-8 correctly... who still use very often a browser that supports some form their national encoding (SJIS, GB2312, Big5, KSC5601), sometimes with ISO2022-* but shamely do not decode UTF-8 properly (even when the page is correctly labelled... but the same browsers really know how to use Unicode codepoints and even know UTF-8, but refuse to switch to it because they do not interpret the meta information that both the page content and the HTTP header specify! I have found that these browsers simply do not recognize ANY encoding markup or meta-data and always use the user setting (which is stupid in that case, unless the page was incorrectly labelled). IIRC, there are still problems with recent versions of browsers in relation to NCRs: some understand hex but not decimal, or vice versa. Sounds like what's needed more than a logo to identify pages in UTF-8 is a logo to identify browsers (and probably HTML editors) that do the right thing wrt encoding. - Peter --- Peter Constable Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA Tel: +1 972 708 7485
RE: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
John Cowan wrote: Netscape 4.x is dead. Alas no. I have two recent (2002 and 2003) cases where the customers, with large NS4.x installations they were not ready to upgrade, said in effect your software must be NS4.x-compatible or no deal. -- François Yergeau
RE: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
Philippe, From: Carl W. Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] It looks to me like UNCODE. Has the UN has taken a rode in globalization? Maybe the web page has no scripting but is still savvy. Wrong! You strip the very visible dot from the i letter, you also refse to see that there's a ligature between the U and N. If you look at this unique ligature, accept also the ligature between the N and i. So the trigram UNi must be considered as a whole, and a distinctive mark or symbol, unique to Unicode. This unique design belongs to the category of logos, and is used since decenials. Against the white of the normal Unicode logo the dot shows. But make it smaller and add a colored background that the dot is very hard to see. Carl
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] there are still (even more) browsers that do not display UTF-8 correctly... who still use very often a browser that supports some form their national encoding (SJIS, GB2312, Big5, KSC5601), sometimes with ISO2022-* but shamely do not decode UTF-8 properly (even when the page is correctly labelled... but the same browsers really know how to use Unicode codepoints and even know UTF-8, but refuse to switch to it because they do not interpret the meta information that both the page content and the HTTP header specify! I have found that these browsers simply do not recognize ANY encoding markup or meta-data and always use the user setting (which is stupid in that case, unless the page was incorrectly labelled). IIRC, there are still problems with recent versions of browsers in relation to NCRs: some understand hex but not decimal, or vice versa. Sounds like what's needed more than a logo to identify pages in UTF-8 is a logo to identify browsers (and probably HTML editors) that do the right thing wrt encoding. Browsers that do not understand NCR (either decimal or hexadecimal) are not HTML4 compliant (and cannot be made compliant with XML or XHTML either). I think this case should become exceptional now (HTML4 is now an old standard) But the HTML standard does not specify how the character encoding can be indicated. There are twoways for this: 1) out of the document using HTTP conventions with Content-Type: which allows to specify a MIME content type; however, the value is not standardized in HTTP itself, but in the MIME content-type registry. 2) within the document using the meta element (the element is standardized in HTML, but not in XML or XHTML, and this usage has been deprecated due to problems with XML)... Here it is just a fallback method, and the value of the meta element refers to another specification that allows to specify HTTP-Equivs within the header of the document, but according to the rules of HTTP (which describes the role of each HTTP equivalent header name, but not its values) So we are left to 2 separate specifications out of scope of the HTML standard. Moreover, these two methods interact with each other. There are technical interoperability problems, because sometimes the HTTP header contradicts the meta http-equiv setting in the document, and too many browsers ignore the now deprecated meta tag, in favor of the HTTP equiv (and this causes deployment problems, as many web servers cannot be configured to send the appropriate HTTP header, due to security restrictions). Some browsers will NOT autodetect the UTF-8 BOM (because it is NOT recommanded by Unicode...) and so will not switch automatically to UTF-8 in absence of a header, or meta element. Such standardization occured only too recently, so in most cases, it is safer to encode a page with NCRs using ISO-8859-1 for the base encoding of the document (decimal recommanded as there are much more browsers that recognize them than hexadecimal NCRs). Decimal NCR's are a legal way (and the most interoperable for now), to specifiy Unicode characters, even with browsers that hae an implementation of UTF-8 (due to the nightmare of conflicting settings in servers, proxies, deprecation of meta, and user settings). When Netscape 4, IE3, or early versions of Opera or Lynx will become insignificant, we will be able to use UTF-8 everywhere. For now it's too risky for any commercial website, which does not have its home page also accessible in a language encoded with ISO-8859-1. We can promote UTF-8, but we still must maintain for now ISO-8859-1 as the defacto standard for default homepages with most Western European languages (from where a user can select and try another language). I have experimented this with a website publishing a Chinese translation. Most Chinese users complained that the UTF-8 page was not rendered automatically with the proper characters (they had to manually select the UTF-8 encoding in their browser). All attempts to sepcify the encoding in the HTTP header and in the meta http-equiv have failed. All complains have stopped immediately when the Chinese pages were reverted to ISO-8859-1 using decimal NCRs! We could have used GB2312 for them (as most Chinese users seem to have browsers that correctly render it, as GB2312 and now the newer GB18030 is mandatory in China) but maintaining pages in this encoding is really too complicate as it constantly requires reencoding with an external tool. This is a proof that browsers, despite they understand the Unicode standard, do not understand the other standards which are sometimes conflicting each other but are still needed... I do hope that old legacy browsers will remoe the bugs for automatically selecting the appropriate encoding used in the pages but the deprecation of the meta htp-equiv element to specify the encoding, and the deployment problem with HTTP headers is
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] scripsit: IIRC, there are still problems with recent versions of browsers in relation to NCRs: some understand hex but not decimal, or vice versa. I have not heard of any that don't support decimal NCRs. -- Long-short-short, long-short-short / Dactyls in dimeter, Verse form with choriambs / (Masculine rhyme): [EMAIL PROTECTED] One sentence (two stanzas) / Hexasyllabically http://www.reutershealth.com Challenges poets who / Don't have the time. --robison who's at texas dot net
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
On Wed, 28 May 2003, John Hudson wrote: At 08:32 PM 5/28/2003, John Cowan wrote: Netscape 4.x is dead. I wish it were. Monitoring the web traffic at one of the sites I'm involved with, I am dismayed to see that more than 5% of visitors are using Netscape 4.7. You should not be dismayed. We have a web application for use in my organization that uses Javascript extensively for providing interactive data manipulation on the client side. In my tests, Internet Explorer 5+ and Mozilla/Netscape 6+ run the Javascript code in some cases *much* more slowly. These tests covered Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms. Slow performance is obnoxious, so we recommend Netscape 4.x for that application since it showed the best performance across different platforms in our heterogenous environment. We could have gone with client-side Java, but the reality is that we would then risk having even *slower* performance. Lots of organizations may have reasons like these for sticking with older, arguably obsolete software like Netscape 4.x. With regard to Unicode/UTF-8 support, a legacy program like Netscape 4.x naturally has limitations.
RE: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
On Thu, 29 May 2003, Marco Cimarosti wrote: Rick McGowan wrote: 2. It is unikely that the Unicode *logo* itself (i.e. the thing at http://www.unicode.org/webscripts/logo60s2.gif) will be incorporated directly in any image that people are allowed to put on their websites, because to put the Unicode logo on a product or whatever requires a license agreement. I.e. the submissions from E. Trager are out of scope because they contain the Unicode logo on the left side. As this comes from an Unicode official, I guess we should simply accept it... Nevertheless, I wonder whether displaying the Unicode *logo* per se has the same legal implication as displaying a *banner* which contains the Unicode logo. IMVHO, that seems like the difference between producing a T-shirt with the Unicode logo and wearing it. In the first case, I must demonstrate that I asked and obtained the permission from the trade-mark owner; in the second case, I don't have to demonstrate anything (apart, maybe, that I did not steal that piece of garment). Exactly. I would sincerely hope that the Unicode Consortium would not take an officious or legalistic attitude about it. If one displays a Best Viewed In Netscape or Best Viewed In Internet Explorer logo on a web page, he or she is effectively promoting that product and providing free advertising for the respective browser vendor. Certainly neither Netscape nor Microsoft is going to object to the incorporation of their official, potentially trademarked logo, just because that someone did not get an official license or permission to display their logo. Of course, it would be a better world if that someone instead chose to display logos on their web site promoting open standards like W3C and ISO 10646 (Unicode) ... so that eventually all content is Best Viewed In Any Browser ...
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
Edward H Trager wrote: John Hudson wrote: John Cowan wrote: Netscape 4.x is dead. I wish it were. Monitoring the web traffic at one of the sites I'm involved with, I am dismayed to see that more than 5% of visitors are using Netscape 4.7. Lots of organizations may have reasons like these for sticking with older, arguably obsolete software like Netscape 4.x. With regard to Unicode/UTF-8 support, a legacy program like Netscape 4.x naturally has limitations. I would prefer to say that Netscape 4.0 is dead, but Netscape 4.7x is not (I see no reason why users should continue to use versions before 4.7, as the 4.7 version fixed a lot of interoperability problems, including cross-platform compatibility with other Netscapes, plus many security fixes...) Netscape 6+ is still too new with its new operating model, and lacks the level of optimizations that were present in Netscape 4.x when it was developed independantly of any regard to standard compliance, during the first stages of the MS/Netscape war on browsers. Netscape 6+ is certainly a very recommanded upgrade for all users that just browse the web. There are still legitimate uses of Netscape 4.x for internal mission critical applications. But should these users be restricted to use it when just browsing the web our of these internal applications? There can exist two browsers on the same host (your internal application can still create custom shortcuts to start Netscape 4.x for the internal application only). However the recent versions of Netscape 7+ based on the new Mozilla Gecko engine include a lot of performance enhancements in the JavaScript engine, and it should be interesting to see if it's still worth the cost of maintaining an old base of browsers (which may be now exposed to many wellknown security flaws). Don't expect newer versions to be as fast as older ones: the main reason is that security is now a critical issue, and the JavaScript engine also needs to perform more checks than in the old legacy Netscape 4.x engine, and also support interfaces to modern active components (with Corba, Java, COM, and XML/XSL/XSLT). Some operations now arebased on XSLT which is still in a very active development stage to solve tricky compatibility issues. Now, performance is not the major issue, but conformance to standards and security comes first. Only stable parts of the development are optimized, to avoid creating unmaintainable source code. Did you consider also Opera in your evaluation of browsers ?
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
Rick posted a message recently he intended as a personal contribution, but it may have been interpreted as an official statement. Here is some clarification of what he wrote. 1. His point about compliance and conformance was intended to indicate that using the savvy logo would only indicate that the pages used the Unicode encoding; it would not imply that the site had met any other formal conformance criteria. (He did not intend to imply that Unicode does not have conformance clauses; Chapter 3 has many of them!) 2. It would be possible for the consortium to incorporate the Unicode logo into the savvy logo, and use weaker permissions than are required for use of the Unicode logo, but that may not be the best way to go because it could cause confusion between the two. Clearly there is a good deal of interest in the physical appearance of the savvy logo, and we will take that feedback into consideration! Mark __ http://www.macchiato.com Eppur si muove - Original Message - From: Rick McGowan [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2003 15:08 Subject: Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo) Since nobody else is saying anything even semi-official, let me inject... As we move through this discussion of snazziness and visual aspects of the Unicode Savvy logo, people should keep a couple of things in mind: 1. UTC has not grappled with what compliant means, and unless/until that happens, you're not going to see that word used in conjunction with any logo or stamp of approval. You can also rule out conformant. 2. It is unikely that the Unicode *logo* itself (i.e. the thing at http://www.unicode.org/webscripts/logo60s2.gif) will be incorporated directly in any image that people are allowed to put on their websites, because to put the Unicode logo on a product or whatever requires a license agreement. I.e. the submissions from E. Trager are out of scope because they contain the Unicode logo on the left side. Those are just some things to keep in mind... Rick
RE: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
2. It is unikely that the Unicode *logo* itself (i.e. the thing at http://www.unicode.org/webscripts/logo60s2.gif) will be incorporated directly in any image that people are allowed to put on their websites, because to put the Unicode logo on a product or whatever requires a license agreement. I.e. the submissions from E. Trager are out of scope because they contain the Unicode logo on the left side. If the goal really is to follow the use of the W3C validation logos-- those validation logos do include the readily recognizable W3C logo. This probably means that W3C made the conscious decision to allow the use of their logo for that particular purpose.
RE: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
I wonder how a character standardizer would like it if a bunch of graphic artists criticized her character encoding. A professional of any kind will listen to critique.
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
They were loosely modelled on the W3C HTML validation logo, which is comparable, in some ways, in what it is trying to do. See: http://www.unicode.org/consortium/newcomer.html My third was that I probably ought to say it anyhow. Maybe they will will take a look at other large organisation's logos and see how to make the Unicode.org logo as snazzy. Well, it is a Unicode Savvy logo, not a Unicode Snazzy logo. ;-) And one of the design goals was to make it small (but recognizable), so that it wouldn't burden the loading of pages that might want to use it. The snazzier you make it, the more you make people pay (in time and bytes) for loading the snazz. I disagree, but perhaps I didn't explain myself well enough. OK, here is what I meant. 1) Pink or grey? It's almost a yukky pink or a boring grey. Color change isn't likely increase byte size any more than it will decrease it. SURE, it is the same pink your website uses, however a color may look right or wrong depending on the other colors about. On the rest of your website, it looks OK. In the logo, it doesn't. 2) The spacing on Savvy doesn't look right. Its too wide, and the font should be a snazzier font. The red letters I really don't like. I'm not sure when red lettering is good, in fact. Red looks like the crossing outs that a teacher might give. It's often used for comment coloring in developer IDEs, meaning like not here, or ignore. I don't think that's the right image. 3) Why not go for a blue savvy or a green? Blue and green suggest more like in harmony, and savvy is about being in harmony. 4) In fact, why not skip the word savvy? W3's logo doesn't use it. It doesn't really have a pleasant ring to it. I'd say even Compliant sounds better. Or even just the tick is better. 5) I do like the Unicode lettering, however there appears to be whitish pixels around the letters. Especially noticable on the pink logo. Some extra white space is needed, also because the letters are too compressed and harder to distinguish. 6) The tick isn't quite right also. Its WAY too short on the long stroke. It looks a bit stunted and unhealthy. The box behind the tick actually gets in the way and is superfluous. It really clumsifies and awkwardifies the image. I know W3's tick is a right angle, but why not a more flowing graceful tick? That really implies elegance. Or is elegance something your company isn't about? (Some people who complain about the decomp/comp mappings might say it's not). Why not put up a call for Unicode logos? Instead of asking for an inhouse one to be made, I'm sure you'd get more logos offered than you could know what to do with. At the worst, you could have a design to learn from. Some of my logos were made with suggestions from other people. I did the work, I did most of the design, but important elements came by other people's ideas. This way I own what I do and it is in house, but still I am open to external improvement. Hey, if you can give me a tiff of the Unicode word (in it's large original format) which is the part that I actually did like, I could re-do the rest for you in PhotoShop v6 format, and submit as a suggestion. -- Theodore H. Smith - Macintosh Consultant / Contractor. My website: www.elfdata.com/
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
From: Marco Cimarosti [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yes, you are right. I never heard the word savvy before this morning. Savvy is better understood in this context as aware, than archaic or informal in your English-Italian dictionnary. It means the author of the website that uses this logo has considered taking the time to comply with the needs of their international users, and took the time to learn how to best fit their needs, by using a technology that is tought to deliver an information that will be better understood by more people and more softwares. So this meets the desire of respecting what is now an industry standard, and avoiding using legacy technologies that never reached the same level of interoperability. A web author could then be said savvy if he adopts interoperable technologies that most people want, because it offers non proprietary solutions, and achieves a better audience for the content. My question is more related to the requirements to display such a logo. After all, one could use this logo on a web site that uses a standardized encoding like ISO-8859-1 (which can be viewed even on legacy browsers), and avoids mixing contents with various encodings (where the visitor needs to guess select and select manually the encoding). My understanding of this logo is that it can be used on a web site that uses a coherent and correctly labelled encoding that is widely implemented. A Chinese web site could for example still use the ISO-8859-1 character set to encode its web pages, provided that Chinese characters are encoded appropriately with character entities such as #20346; where the sample number here is the **Unicode** codepoint (excluding any non standard use of sequences like #240;#136;#128;#144; (these values are fictive) assuming that the browser will be able to automatically correct tis sequence as if it was UTF-8 encoded. The other requirement is that te web site MUST not label its content with UTF-8 when it is not (for example if it is encoded with CUSE-8). So my opinion is that a web site that fully conforms to the HTML4 or XML standards regarding its encoding is implicitly conforming to Unicode (because this is a requirement in all W3C standards for documents and schemas). Being Unicode savvy means also that the author has taken the time to test the support of its content with common browsers and available fonts (excluding proprietary fonts that may require a separate licence, and all non-Unicode technical fonts), by a careful analysis of how the content will be interpreted (this means some knowledge of some technical implementation issues found in browsers, so that the content will not be broken, but without using any non-standard Unicode extension). Finally this logo implies that the web site adopts the Unicode standards instead of any other encoding algorithms found in proprietary application, and chooses to remove all content whose encoding would cause problems to most people (for example ISO2022, despite it is a standard, is widely implemented only in far eastern Asia). The design focus does not then address a specific population or part of the world. That's why I prefer the Unicode motto The world speaks Unicode, or something like Best viewed by anyone in such a logo. Concerning the logo itself, its colors are strange, and do not match the official colors of the Unicode logo. But the worst thing is that both logos are not enough contrasted to be readable: red letters on this dark gray is difficult to read. These logos do not meet a basic design rule for logographic arts, which is that the logo must be easily recognizable, easily reproduced (think about printing them on a BW laser or inkjet printer with less than 300dpi!), so it must use a contrasted design for its colors. Finally the typographic design of the word savvy is quite poor. Additionally, many readers would read it sawy, and could not find this word in a dictionnary. Conclusions: these initial logos are difficult to read (even worse for the many people that are color blinded and cannot easily differentiate the dark red letters from the gray background!), difficult to understand, difficult to reproduce, and not very attractive visually. May be this page is a call for contributions... A subsidiary question is: can these logos be translated, and recolored ? What is the legal aspect when using the unique typographic design of the UNI ligature used in the official Unicode logo and in the proposed logo ? Can we design our own logos that will link to the same website, but with a more appealing look?
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
And one of the design goals was to make it small (but recognizable), so that it wouldn't burden the loading of pages that might want to use it. The snazzier you make it, the more you make people pay (in time and bytes) for loading the snazz. So, you mean that it's not likely we could create some javascript/Quicktime thing with a hidden easter egg, such that if you enter the Mongolian translation of What is Unicode it plays the Unicode music video? - Peter --- Peter Constable Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA Tel: +1 972 708 7485
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
From: Theodore H. Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Why not put up a call for Unicode logos? Instead of asking for an inhouse one to be made, I'm sure you'd get more logos offered than you could know what to do with. At the worst, you could have a design to learn from. Some of my logos were made with suggestions from other people. I did the work, I did most of the design, but important elements came by other people's ideas. This way I own what I do and it is in house, but still I am open to external improvement. Hey, if you can give me a tiff of the Unicode word (in it's large original format) which is the part that I actually did like, I could re-do the rest for you in PhotoShop v6 format, and submit as a suggestion. In my humble opinion, I do think that the unique design of the UNI ligature in the Unicode official logo is already copyrighted, and thus any logo that would be created with it would require an authorization from Unicode before being published. So any other logo that would be proposed should use this unique typographic ligature as a sign of recognition, and Unicode could mandate that any use of this ligature requires linking it to its website and nothing else. This would leave some space for creation of more appealing logos or buttons for use on websites. Another question is: can such a derived logo be created which uses the same official colors of the main Unicode logo? The proposed buttons do not match completely with the official logo by its colors, and layout and content. The only common thing is the UNi ligature, and the textual name (both of which are copyrighted and protected against illegitimate claims by others)... This copyright is enough to allow reproducing it on websites only with the fair terms given in the logos page, only as a way to insert a graphic link to the official Unicode website (http://www.unicode.org/), but any author of a derived graphic that would use the Unicode name or the unique UNi ligature cannot claim anything if this creation is published without the prior authorization of Unicode who owns the copyrights. So these creations are implicitly donated to Unicode without possible claims. Then Unicode could reuse these creations only if the original author explicitly endorses the risks associated to other possible copyright claims related to other parts of the logo creation. Unicode would then be free to use or not use them on its logos page, and could use a prepublishing phase where usage on other websites is NOT recommended by Unicode), during which other authors can address their claims. If such a claim is found in this phase, the logo will be removed immediately. After a reasonnable period these prepublished logos would become universally usable in their unaltered form (including its colors, layout, dimensions and typography) and further claim would still be possible but only for a public statement where such restricted usage is authorized on a royaltee-free and non time-limited licence donated to the Unicode.org committee, which could then not change or extend any term of the usage policy for these logos. If such future change is needed for the policy (for example if Unicode becomes a ISO committee, and has its domain name changed to a new international ISO domain), then Unicode would need to remove the logos or get an explicit authorization from the original authors, but Unicode would still keep its full rights on the whole logo which uses the protected name Unicode or the unique UNi ligature, so that legacy websites using them would not be forced to remove these logos from a lot of unmaintained web pages. This means that a web page is not authorized to change the link without adhering to the new usage policy published in any new domain, even if the unicode.org domain name is deregistered. If the link stops working, the only thing that the website author could do would be to remove both the logo and the link, and find a newer logo and link for the new domain name according to a newer usage policy... Sun already has such a policy for the Java(tm) logo, however it is more restrictive as it requires a registration with a valid email that the user must maintain valid in order to be able to receive mandatory notices of changes in the logo usage policy. The W3C and the ICRA content rating system publish some good policies for the logos that can be used in websites that conform to their specifications.
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
And how about some non-latin script, non-English versions for web sites where the main content is in other scripts and languages. (What is the ideograph for savvy ?) - Chris
RE: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
Philippe Verdy wrote: Savvy is better understood in this context as aware, than archaic or informal in your English-Italian dictionnary. No, archaic, American and informal are usage labels, not translations. The translation is buon senso. (BTW, it is: Dizionario Garzanti di inglese, Garzanti Editore, 1997, ISBN 88-11-10212-X) _ Marco
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
And how about some non-latin script, non-English versions for web sites where the main content is in other scripts and languages. (What is the ideograph for savvy ?) Instead of that, how about just plain OK, which has already become quite universal. _ James
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
On Wed, 28 May 2003 08:02:13 -0400, John Cowan wrote: In case your dictionary does not explain this, its etymology is the Portuguese verb saber Lat. SAPERE, which was used in the original Lingua Franca and from there spread into almost all the pidgins and creoles of the Earth. As you can well imagine, a pidgin needs a verb for understand/comprehend as one of its very basic words! So it can be verb (understand), adjective (being able to understand), or noun (comprehension). The last is the least informal, at least in English; the adjective is evidently meant here, and in more normative orthography Unicode-savvy would be used. The OED says Orig. Black pidgin Eng. after Sp. sabe usted you know To me at least, it conjures up images of Tonto speaking to the Lone Ranger : Me no savvy, Kemo Sabe. Andrew
RE: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
Marco, No, archaic, American and informal are usage labels, not translations. The translation is buon senso. (BTW, it is: Dizionario Garzanti di inglese, Garzanti Editore, 1997, ISBN 88-11-10212-X) Webster's has to know, to understand or common sense, understanding. In actually it is closer to meaning that a person knows their way around. They are adaptable. I suspect that it came from the slave trade and was used to describe slaves who were quick to pick up on things. Knowing where a word comes from often help understand the subtleness of a word. I agree that it is bad to use words that don't translate culturally. I think that savvy is a nice word. The word nice from the Latin nescius or ignorant or not knowing. In jest the Roman solders call the brits nice in a tone of voice that sounded complementary. Today it is a complement when you really have nothing good to say. It looks to me like UNCODE. Has the UN has taken a rode in globalization? Maybe the web page has no scripting but is still savvy. Who knows? Just move to the next page so that I do not have to look at that awful pink. Carl
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
I wonder how a character standardizer would like it if a bunch of graphic artists criticized her character encoding. OK, I have to admit that even though I applied the Savvy logo to my home page almost immediately, with an eye toward applying it to all my other pages, I could see some room for improvement. Here are some (hopefully) constructive suggestions, in no particular order: 1. If the W3C HTML conformance logos were used as a template (a good idea), there's no reason the Savvy logo couldn't have been exactly the same size (88 31). That way it would line up more uniformly with the W3C logo, as I tried to do on my page. The Savvy logo is slightly bigger, 89 35. I also like the beveling effect on the W3C logo, which could be achieved easily in a 256-color GIF without increasing the file size noticeably. 2. The pink version is actually a decent match for the inside pages of the Unicode site, but as Marco pointed out, red and white are really the defining colors of the Unicode logo. I don't care that the name pink makes no sense (actually I'm grateful it's not pink). 3. The gray version is too dark. 4. It would be nice if the Savvy logo could incorporate the basic UNi logo in some way, but I understand how this could be a problem. After all, the Consortium has strict licensing and usage guidelines for use of the UNi logo (http://www.unicode.org/consortium/logo.html). 4a. The UNiCODe lettering might be a bit odd, but it's been a trademark of Unicode, Inc. for at least a decade. Deal with it. 5. Translated versions would be a definite plus. Multilingual support is, after all, probably the main benefit people associate with Unicode. If Kareem needs some additional pro bono work, perhaps list members could send suggested translations (to Kareem or Magda directly, **NOT** to the list). 6. Then there's that word savvy. As others have explained, it's a slangy English word meaning knowledgeable in a practical sense. Like savoir-faire and other terms from the same Latin root (sapere, to be wise or to understand), it has acquired a special meaning beyond the literal and can be difficult to translate. It's noteworthy that someone like Marco, who is not a native English speaker but whose use of colloquial written English is excellent, did not know the word. I don't really think we are trying to say that a Web page is knowledgeable about Unicode, but rather that it uses or takes advantage of Unicode. How about Powered by Unicode? -Doug Ewell Fullerton, California http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
Andrew C. West scripsit: The OED says Orig. Black pidgin Eng. after Sp. sabe usted you know The OED's etymology is almost certainly wrong in this case. M-w.com, as well as creolists generally, are quite firm in the Portuguese etymology, not (obviously) on formalist grounds, but because of the historical facts of both Atlantic and Pacific creole formation. To me at least, it conjures up images of Tonto speaking to the Lone Ranger : Me no savvy, Kemo Sabe. You bet: that too is pidgin, and in fact mi no savi is perfectly grammatical Tok Pisin. -- But you, Wormtongue, you have done what you could for your true master. Some reward you have earned at least. Yet Saruman is apt to overlook his bargains. I should advise you to go quickly and remind him, lest he forget your faithful service. --Gandalf John Cowan [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
Hey, if you can give me a tiff of the Unicode word (in it's large original format) which is the part that I actually did like, I could re-do the rest for you in PhotoShop v6 format, and submit as a suggestion. In my humble opinion, I do think that the unique design of the UNI ligature in the Unicode official logo is already copyrighted, and thus any logo that would be created with it would require an authorization from Unicode before being published. That was a long email, but I think you misunderstand me. I was offering to make one, for THEM to use, change or learn from. I wouldn't use it myself. I don't think I can be breaking a copyright by accepting a tiff emailed to me from Unicode.org staff. -- Theodore H. Smith - Macintosh Consultant / Contractor. My website: www.elfdata.com/
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
On Wed, 28 May 2003, Doug Ewell wrote: I don't really think we are trying to say that a Web page is knowledgeable about Unicode, but rather that it uses or takes advantage of Unicode. How about Powered by Unicode? I don't think powered is the right word. Unicode Compliant is more to the point. Also, I think it would be easier to get reasonable translations for compliant. (In the gray space on the logo I sent to the list earlier today, I had put the word compliant but I couldn't find exactly the right font to make it look right ... )
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
At 11:16 AM 5/28/2003, Edward H Trager wrote: On Wed, 28 May 2003, Doug Ewell wrote: I don't really think we are trying to say that a Web page is knowledgeable about Unicode, but rather that it uses or takes advantage of Unicode. How about Powered by Unicode? I don't think powered is the right word. Unicode Compliant is more to the point. Also, I think it would be easier to get reasonable translations for compliant. Compliant is a problem term, as compliance is a problem concept. I believe we discussed, some months ago, the problem of claiming compliance for systems or applications, since very little (any?) software implements everything in Unicode or implements everything equally well. What would it mean to say that a website is 'Unicode compliant'? Is there any point in proclaiming a website 'Unicode compliant' if the visitor is using a browser that is *not* Unicode compliant insofar as being able to correctly display that site? Magda wrote: 'Very often the Unicode Consortium has received requests from webmasters who wished to indicate with a logo or banner that their site supports or uses Unicode.' It seems to me that these webmasters are asking for something that doesn't really mean anything except, presumably, 'Get your UTF-8 here!' So before critiquing the design of the logo -- ugly though it is --, or redesigning it, I think it would be a good idea to clarify the purpose of the exercise. John Hudson Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine, who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge -- that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism. - Umberto Eco
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
J Do [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Instead of that, how about just plain OK, which has already become quite universal. No need for words like savvy, compliant or OK - just having the check mark symbol as in Edward's design says enough and at that way it's not favouring one language or another. - Chris
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
J Do [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Instead of that, how about just plain OK, which has already become quite universal. No need for words like savvy, compliant or OK - just having the check mark symbol as in Edward's design says enough and at that way it's not favouring one language or another. ... On Wed, 28 May 2003, John Hudson wrote: So before critiquing the design of the logo -- ugly though it is --, or redesigning it, I think it would be a good idea to clarify the purpose of the exercise. John Hudson The purpose of having such a logo is to highlight the fact that the web page uses Unicode encoding. There are still millions and millions of people in the world who don't have a clue what Unicode is. Displaying the logo enhances the visibility of Unicode to your web page visitors. The criteria for displaying the logo seem to me to be stated in a fairly clear manner on http://www.unicode.org/consortium/unisavvy.html: * Each such page must be encoded in UTF-8 or other valid encoding form of Unicode. * Each such page must be validated with the W3C HTML validator to ensure that the UTF-8 or other encoding of the pages is valid. (If the W3C validator does not complain that the encoding of the page is invalid, then you can still display the logo even if you have other unrelated HTML validation errors on your pages.) * The logos must be used with a hyperlink that points to our web site, http://www.unicode.org/. The only thing I question a little bit is the second rule above that says that you can still display the Unicode logo even if your page has unrelated HTML validation errors. I would favor a stricter rule that says you have to clean up all of your W3C validation errors first, and then you can display the logo. Nothing wrong with holding people to a higher standard, right? (Actually, this will force me to clean up my own pages too!) Herbert Elbrecht's addition of UTF-8 to the logo design I submitted earlier today is IMO a good answer to the logo problem. And of course, if the encoding is not UTF-8 but some other Unicode encoding, then one could modify the logo accordingly. I've taken the liberty of modifying Herbert's logo so that it now occupies only 1.1 Kb instead of the 5 Kb of the original: the 1.1 Kb version is attached. Herbert Elbrecht wrote: Hi - why not just call it by name: [ Part 2, Image/PNG 7.5KB. ] [ Cannot display this part. Press V then S to save in a file. ] [ Part 3: Attached Text ] all else is self-evident, right? unicodelogo.png Description: UNICODE UTF-8 LOGO
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
Since nobody else is saying anything even semi-official, let me inject... As we move through this discussion of snazziness and visual aspects of the Unicode Savvy logo, people should keep a couple of things in mind: 1. UTC has not grappled with what compliant means, and unless/until that happens, you're not going to see that word used in conjunction with any logo or stamp of approval. You can also rule out conformant. 2. It is unikely that the Unicode *logo* itself (i.e. the thing at http://www.unicode.org/webscripts/logo60s2.gif) will be incorporated directly in any image that people are allowed to put on their websites, because to put the Unicode logo on a product or whatever requires a license agreement. I.e. the submissions from E. Trager are out of scope because they contain the Unicode logo on the left side. Those are just some things to keep in mind... Rick
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
At 02:26 PM 5/28/2003, Edward H Trager wrote: The purpose of having such a logo is to highlight the fact that the web page uses Unicode encoding. There are still millions and millions of people in the world who don't have a clue what Unicode is. Displaying the logo enhances the visibility of Unicode to your web page visitors. Then maybe that's what the logo should say: 'Unicode encoded'. That states simply and accurately what the logo is intended to communicate. Attached is mockup with globe+checkmark image hopefuly conveying something along the lines of 'the world speaks Unicode' or 'this website works everywhere'. Note, I'm a type designer, not a logo designer, so I don't know whether this mockup might look too much like something else out there: it's hardly an innovative idea. John Hudsonattachment: UnicEnc.gifTiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine, who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge -- that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism. - Umberto Eco
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On 28/05/2003 13:56:47 Philippe Verdy wrote: My question is more related to the requirements to display such a logo. After all, one could use this logo on a web site that uses a standardized encoding like ISO-8859-1 Why would you think that when the logo page says it must be UTF-8? No, the page suggests UTF-8 or an encoding form that complies with Unicode... (So I think it includes ISO-8859-1 which enough for most European languages, but still allows to use non Latin-1 characters as the HTML/XML standard defines character entities which is a particular way to specify Unicode codepoints.)
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
My question is more related to the requirements to display such a logo. After all, one could use this logo on a web site that uses a standardized encoding like ISO-8859-1 Why would you think that when the logo page says it must be UTF-8? No, the page suggests UTF-8 or an encoding form that complies with Unicode... (So I think it includes ISO-8859-1 which enough for most European languages, but still allows to use non Latin-1 characters as the HTML/XML standard defines character entities which is a particular way to specify Unicode codepoints.) I wonder about this. The Unicode FAQ makes the point that some browsers will not display NCR's unless the charset is UTF-8. It does seem logical that, NCR's or not, a page with the logo should be in one of the three standard Unicode Encoding Forms, UTF-8, 16, or 32.
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
Philippe Verdy verdy_p at wanadoo dot fr wrote: Why would you think that when the logo page says it must be UTF-8? No, the page suggests UTF-8 or an encoding form that complies with Unicode... (So I think it includes ISO-8859-1 which enough for most European languages, but still allows to use non Latin-1 characters as the HTML/XML standard defines character entities which is a particular way to specify Unicode codepoints.) I do not think a page encoded in ISO 8859-1 with NCRs like #225; or named entities like aacute; counts as being encoded in Unicode. -Doug Ewell Fullerton, California http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
Tom Gewecke scripsit: I wonder about this. The Unicode FAQ makes the point that some browsers will not display NCR's unless the charset is UTF-8. Netscape 4.x is dead. It does seem logical that, NCR's or not, a page with the logo should be in one of the three standard Unicode Encoding Forms, UTF-8, 16, or 32. I agree. -- A poetical purist named Cowan [that's me: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Once put the rest of us dowan. [on xml-dev] Your verse would be sweeterhttp://www.ccil.org/~cowan If it only had metrehttp://www.reutershealth.com And rhymes that didn't force me to frowan. [overpacked line!] --Michael Kay
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
At 08:32 PM 5/28/2003, John Cowan wrote: Netscape 4.x is dead. I wish it were. Monitoring the web traffic at one of the sites I'm involved with, I am dismayed to see that more than 5% of visitors are using Netscape 4.7. John Hudson Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine, who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge -- that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism. - Umberto Eco
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
From: Tom Gewecke [EMAIL PROTECTED] I wonder about this. The Unicode FAQ makes the point that some browsers will not display NCR's unless the charset is UTF-8. It does seem logical that, NCR's or not, a page with the logo should be in one of the three standard Unicode Encoding Forms, UTF-8, 16, or 32. The Unicode FAQ could have said also that the reverse is also true: there are still (even more) browsers that do not display UTF-8 correctly, but accept Numeric Character References and accept them correctly as designating Unicode codepoints. I got more reports notably from Chinese, Korean, and Japanese users, who still use very often a browser that supports some form their national encoding (SJIS, GB2312, Big5, KSC5601), sometimes with ISO2022-* but shamely do not decode UTF-8 properly (even when the page is correctly labelled, because their browser does not switch automatically the encoding when the page is loaded). This case occurs even when the encoding is specified with a HTTP Content-Type header, or with a HTML header element. So for now, it's simply easier to use UTF-8 when designing the pages, and then save them into ISO-8859-1 (using NCRs). I admit this is troublesome, but the same browsers really know how to use Unicode codepoints and even know UTF-8, but refuse to switch to it because they do not interpret the meta information that both the page content and the HTTP header specify! I have found that these browsers simply do not recognize ANY encoding markup or meta-data and always use the user setting (which is stupid in that case, unless the page was incorrectly labelled).
RE: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
Rick McGowan wrote: 2. It is unikely that the Unicode *logo* itself (i.e. the thing at http://www.unicode.org/webscripts/logo60s2.gif) will be incorporated directly in any image that people are allowed to put on their websites, because to put the Unicode logo on a product or whatever requires a license agreement. I.e. the submissions from E. Trager are out of scope because they contain the Unicode logo on the left side. As this comes from an Unicode official, I guess we should simply accept it... Nevertheless, I wonder whether displaying the Unicode *logo* per se has the same legal implication as displaying a *banner* which contains the Unicode logo. IMVHO, that seems like the difference between producing a T-shirt with the Unicode logo and wearing it. In the first case, I must demonstrate that I asked and obtained the permission from the trade-mark owner; in the second case, I don't have to demonstrate anything (apart, maybe, that I did not steal that piece of garment). _ Marco
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
From: Marco Cimarosti [EMAIL PROTECTED] As this comes from an Unicode official, I guess we should simply accept it... Nevertheless, I wonder whether displaying the Unicode *logo* per se has the same legal implication as displaying a *banner* which contains the Unicode logo. I note that the current logos page does not seem to be accessible by a link found on the web site. So I guess this page was created only to be submitted here for comments or contributions... The existing buttons on the logos page do not follow the copyright notice found in the official page about the usage of logos, because they do not include the required TM symbol... (The Registered symbol must only be used for the Unicode(R) Consortium, which is a registered trademark of the Unicode Consortium, Inc.)...
RE: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
A logo with a yellow or light blue or pale green background would be more appealing on various bright backgrounds. I also think that the grey logo is too dark and difficult to red, and the pink logo is quite strange. The red of the checkmark should contrast more by using asaturated color, and the Unicode letters should have well-contrasted borders. The savvy word may only be appealing to English readers (other readers may confuse it with save it and would not understand it clearly). I would much more prefer the red-or-burgundy-white-black scheme used in the Unicode consortium website. It's a good clear set of colors with lots of contrast, pastel colors just don't work across different monitors that well. (Of course, this is getting dangerously close to the color of the bikeshed discussion: http://www.unixguide.net/freebsd/faq/16.19.shtml) I would have much prefered expressions like smart with Unicode, or The world speaks Unicode, or simply this site speaks Unicode, or Unicode feeds this site, or the small Unicode logo with the text Best viewed by everyone, or Unicode speaks your language... I have to agree that I don't much like the savvy. One more alternative could be Unicode spoken here, or a slight variation from the above Best viewed by anyone. Unicode savvy just sounds wrong. After all this grumpiness I do like the idea of such a logo.
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
On Wed, 28 May 2003 00:20:38 +0200, Philippe Verdy wrote: I would have much prefered expressions like smart with Unicode, or The world speaks Unicode, or simply this site speaks Unicode, or Unicode feeds this site, or the small Unicode logo with the text Best viewed by everyone, or Unicode speaks your language... I agree with Philippe on this one. A sensible, and easily understandable, motto like The world speaks Unicode would be much better. The word savvy just sends a shiver of embarrasment down my spine. Not only is savvy not a word that is probably high in the vocabulary list of non-English speakers, but I don't think many native English speakers would ever use it by choice (maybe it's just me, but I really loathe the word). And for what its worth, the logos are definitely NOT snazzy (hmm, don't like snazzy either, though I can't think of a better alternative). Andrew
RE: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
Andrew C. West wrote: I agree with Philippe on this one. A sensible, and easily understandable, motto like The world speaks Unicode would be much better. The word savvy just sends a shiver of embarrasment down my spine. Not only is savvy not a word that is probably high in the vocabulary list of non-English speakers, but I don't think many native English speakers would ever use it by choice (maybe it's just me, but I really loathe the word). Yes, you are right. I never heard the word savvy before this morning. My English-Italian dictionary has two savvy entries: an adjective (labeled fam. amer. = US English, informal) and a noun (labeled antiq. / fam. = archaic or informal). However, all the translations have to do with common sense, and none of them seems to explain the intuitive meaning of Unicode savvy, which I guess is supposed to be: Unicode enabled, Unicode supported, encoded in Unicode, etc. Another i18n problem is the lettering: the unusual legation of the first three letters and the mix-up of upper- and lower-case forms can make the text completely unintelligible to people not familiar with handwritten forma of the Latin alphabet. I guess that many people would wonder in what strange alphabet Unicode is written COD. About the V-shaped tick in the square, that is so deformed and stylized that it might be hard to recognize. Keep in mind that this symbol is quite English-specific; in many parts of the world, different signs are used to tick squares on paper forms (e.g., X, O, a filled square, etc.). The English-style tick is only seen on GUI interfaces like Windows, Mac, etc. I also share the concerns about colors: beside their ugliness (I would have never imagined that that curious yellow could be called pink), they fail to recall the red and white of the well-know Unicode logo. If I didn't know it before seeing them, I would never have associated those icons with the Unicode standard or the Unicode Consortium. My humble suggestions would be: 1) Replace the semi-dialectal Unicode savvy with a clearer motto (such as encoded in Unicode, or the other phrases suggested by others); possibly, check that all the words used are in the high-frequency part of the English lexicon. 2) Use the regular squared Unicode logo which is seen in the top-left corner of the Unicode web site. That's already famous and immediately hints to Unicode. 3) Compose the motto (*including* the word Unicode) in an widespread and well-readable typeface, in black or un one of the colors of the Unicode logo. 4) Make the V tick sign as similar as possible to a square root symbol, because that is the glyph which has been popularized by GUI interfaces. Ciao. Marco
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
Marco Cimarosti scripsit: My English-Italian dictionary has two savvy entries: an adjective (labeled fam. amer. = US English, informal) and a noun (labeled antiq. / fam. = archaic or informal). However, all the translations have to do with common sense, and none of them seems to explain the intuitive meaning of Unicode savvy, which I guess is supposed to be: Unicode enabled, Unicode supported, encoded in Unicode, etc. In case your dictionary does not explain this, its etymology is the Portuguese verb saber Lat. SAPERE, which was used in the original Lingua Franca and from there spread into almost all the pidgins and creoles of the Earth. As you can well imagine, a pidgin needs a verb for understand/comprehend as one of its very basic words! So it can be verb (understand), adjective (being able to understand), or noun (comprehension). The last is the least informal, at least in English; the adjective is evidently meant here, and in more normative orthography Unicode-savvy would be used. But I agree that it's bad wording and a bad design. Please try again, O Unicode Consortium! Wan pisi ting dat mi av got, Maski dat ting mi no can du, Yu taki yu no savi wat? Bambu. --Lewis Carroll (modern orthography) (Note the third line, meaning You say you don't understand what [I mean]?) -- The man that wanders far[EMAIL PROTECTED] from the walking tree http://www.reutershealth.com --first line of a non-existent poem by: John Cowan
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
A logo with a yellow or light blue or pale green background would be more appealing on various bright backgrounds. I also think that the grey logo is too dark and difficult to red, and the pink logo is quite strange. The red of the checkmark should contrast more by using asaturated color, and the Unicode letters should have well-contrasted borders. The savvy word may only be appealing to English readers (other readers may confuse it with save it and would not understand it clearly). I would have much prefered expressions like smart with Unicode, or The world speaks Unicode, or simply this site speaks Unicode, or Unicode feeds this site, or the small Unicode logo with the text Best viewed by everyone, or Unicode speaks your language... -- Philippe. - Original Message - From: Theodore H. Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 11:25 PM Subject: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo) My first reaction, is that the logos don't look like they compare to other logos in terms of style. For example Mac OSX logos, XML logos, and that generally do look more snazzy. My second reaction is that I hope I haven't annoyed anyone. My third was that I probably ought to say it anyhow. Maybe they will will take a look at other large organisation's logos and see how to make the Unicode.org logo as snazzy.
Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)
Theodore Smith wrote: My first reaction, is that the logos don't look like they compare to other logos in terms of style. For example Mac OSX logos, XML logos, and that generally do look more snazzy. They were loosely modelled on the W3C HTML validation logo, which is comparable, in some ways, in what it is trying to do. See: http://www.unicode.org/consortium/newcomer.html where the Unicode site uses the W3C NTML logo to indicate our own dedication to validating our pages with the W3C HTML validator. My second reaction is that I hope I haven't annoyed anyone. Unlikely. My third was that I probably ought to say it anyhow. Maybe they will will take a look at other large organisation's logos and see how to make the Unicode.org logo as snazzy. Well, it is a Unicode Savvy logo, not a Unicode Snazzy logo. ;-) And one of the design goals was to make it small (but recognizable), so that it wouldn't burden the loading of pages that might want to use it. The snazzier you make it, the more you make people pay (in time and bytes) for loading the snazz. --Ken
