2012-05-19 23:56, Doug Ewell wrote:
Andreas Prilop wrote:
That release will include the new character, U+20BA TURKISH LIRA
SIGN.
Will it also include U+20BB NEW DRACHMA SIGN ?
and Charlie Ruland replied:
The Greek parliament and other authorities have not decided to
reintroduce the drachma, so the answer is no.
I suspect Andreas was making a facetious commentary.
His jokes tend to have substance, in addition to being hilarious.
But if the Greek
authorities do make that decision, and if they are drinking the same
currency-sign powdered drink mix as Turkey [1], and India before them,
I'm sure we will see a proposal from Greece right away.
The situation in Greece is much more serious than in India or Turkey. If
they abandon the euro, they can hardly move back to the old drachma. It
is not just a matter of giving a new symbol for a currency in use; it’s
about an entirely new currency, though possibly under an old name.
Of course, there is no logical necessity for introducing a new currency
symbol as a character; but human behavior and economics aren’t logical.
[1] "The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) organized a
Competition for the Turkish Lira Sign to further enhance the prestige
and to raise worldwide recognition of the Turkish lira.
[...]
I wish the Unicode Consortium would remove the link to that page from
their blog.
I think it is rather realistic, in addition to the amusement value.
It could fool newcomers into thinking these bogus marketing
goals played a part in getting the Turkish lira sign into Unicode.
Didn’t they?
New currency signs get code points because UTC believes they will soon enter
widespread use in plain text, not because UTC wishes to "enhance the
prestige" of a national currency, or endorse it as a "safe haven," or
make a statement as to its "steadily rising value." What bunkum.
It takes ten years or more, optimistically speaking, before a character
added to UTC is generally available and in use. But admittedly, UTC
status makes it possible to use the symbol in encoded plain text. I
wonder how many databases or systems will actually be updated to reflect
the adoption of a currency symbol in UTC, within a decade or two.
My point is: Get real, adoption into UTC *is* a political decision, with
no direct technological implications, in matters like this. It can,
however, be a fairly neutral decision: any reasonably wide national
consensus is enough.
Yucca
