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 "Ɯ̇CODƏ". 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
