It seems to me the proposal would present a stronger case if samples were available that were something *other* than an explanation of the symbol in a dictionary, encyclopaedia, or other reference.
Possibly, but there is only so much time in the day, and I certainly did a better job than Mark Davis did with L2/02-361. >:-(
(UTC, please take this as a formal protest at the action taken to approve the addition of characters based on a document as flimsy as that one. Bad UTC. No biscuit!)
It would be similar to these kinds of samples if I were to create a proposal using as a sample the Phonetic Symbol Guide, but that might not clearly show if a character was something that was merely proposed by someone at one time but never actually used -- in such a case, taking a sample from Phonetic Symbol Guide does not really demonstrate the need to encode as a character for
text representation.
I tend to disagree. Symbols have a very different nature than phonetic characters do. We have *all* seen the atom sign, and I have, as Liungman points out, seen it on maps, though I don't seem to have such a map here in the house. Similarly, the fleur-de-lis is a well-known named symbol which can be used to represent a number of things.
Likewise, the sample for (e.g.) the fleur-de-lis doesn't really provide a case that this should be a character to facilitate representation in text.
Of course these can be considered to be dingbats, as many symbols are. When I look at the set of dingbats and symbols in the Standard, I find that there some odd omissions. The gender symbols for instance that I proposed in N2587, and a set of religious symbols which I'm preparing in another document. More dictionary symbols like the SHAMROCK. And so on.
It wouldn't be hard to provide a comparable descriptive paragraph that began with an image of the Stars and Stripes, but I don't think we'd want to encode the US flag as a character.
That would be a logo.
I'm not saying that I oppose the proposed characters; just that samples of a different nature would make for a stronger case.
I do the best I can. At the end of the day my document won its case and the five characters were accepted.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
