As Stefan Persson already observed, U+212B ANGSTROM SIGN (Å) exists in
Unicode alongside U+00C5 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH RING ABOVE (Å) only
because both characters were present in some legacy character set with
which Unicode had to maintain round-trip compatibility.

-Doug Ewell
 Fullerton, California


----- Original Message -----
From: Wm Sean Glen
To: David Oftedal ; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 6:18 pm
Subject: Re: Ångstrøm symbol


Dear David,
There is a letter in the Swedish alphabet (capital A with a ring above).
Some Swede by the name of Ångstrøm was a scientist and worked with light
and color. He came up with a convenient was to accurately measure the
color of light. That measurement was named after him and given the
symbol (capital A with a ring above). The next time you see one of those
laser pointer pens take a look at the label. It will say 670 nm which
means 670 nanometers. The red light has a wavelength of 670 billionths
of a meter. An Ångstrøm is equal to ten nanometers so that red light
would be described as 67Å. When Kodak develops your film, they calibrate
their equipment by looking for some common color like sky blue and
making that equal to a standard Ångstrøm value. I don't know why Unicode
implemented it twice. We use a regular old k for kilo and M for Mega.
When it comes to other scientific symbols, we still use a Greek
uppercase omega to represent ohms of electrical resistance and lowercase
omega to represent rotational speed.

Wm Seán Glen
-----Original Message-----
From: David Oftedal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Saturday, February 15, 2003 8:54 AM
Subject: Ångstrøm symbol


Hi,

One of you mentioned that Unicode is reluctant to make symbols for
things like TM, that are really only composed of other characters.

Yet I read on someone's website that there's an Ångstrøm (Or Ångström, I
Am Not A Swede) symbol that's exactly identical to the Scandinavian Å.


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