KW> As *characters*? Why? Partly because they are used in contexts that might allow interpreting them as characters (for example, used to signify languages, to signify nationalities of delegates at conferences in conference papers or to signify countries in soccer match statistics :-)).
I'm not saying they *are* characters, just that it's worth thinking about it. If I had genuine evidence for them being characters, I'd propose them formally. KW> What is this bug that people catch, which induces them to consider KW> all things semiological to be, ipso facto, abstract characters KW> suitable for encoding in Unicode? In the mail to which you're answering, I dimly recall writing something like >> The most obvious and simple example for glyph colours with semantic >> meaning that I can think of... I wanted to mention something I considered a pretty good "example for glyph colours with semantic meaning". That's all. You're slightly overreacting when you talk about people catching bugs here. If I wanted to have flag characters in Unicode, I'd probably write a summery about flag character use in electronic communication and propose the whole bit, risking it being rejected as opposed to risking being snarled at on this mailing list for mentioning them. (And in a standard that has bothered to allocate Zapf Dingbats because it's present in a lot of laser printers, "all things semiological" is a bit of a broad measure) Philipp
