Karl Pentzlin, Mon, 13 Aug 2012 15:04:24 +0200: > Am Montag, 13. August 2012 um 14:24 schrieb Michael Everson: > > ME> On 13 Aug 2012, at 12:37, Karl Pentzlin wrote: >>> Why is U+25CA ◊ LOZENGE in the "Mac OS Roman" character set (at >>> 0xD7 = 215, and therefore contained in several common fonts like >>> Arial or Times New Roman)? > ME> Because they put it there in 1984. > > My intent is to get information *why* the character was considered > that important at that time to be included into an 8-bit character set > with its limited space.
Mac fonts also included ƒ (LATIN SMALL LETTER F WITH HOOK). This was due to the fact that names of folders used the name 'foo ƒ] - or 'foo U+0192', if you wish. It was, however, usually only when the system or an app created a folder name that the ƒ was added. Humans creating a folder name seldom added it, I think. So I suspect that U+25CA ◊ LOZENGE was used in some visible place in the system and/or in applications. I have used Mac since roughly System 7, but I don't remember what the U+25CA ◊ LOZENGE was used for. But I have a vague memory of having seen it in some outline - thus, where the bullets are used e.g. in HTML unordered lists (<ul>). If so, then it was a character that, like the ƒ, was not typed by users very often. > The problem I am confronted with is that this > character shares its German name "Raute" with the "#", and I have to > consider any historical use of the (real) lozenge when describing > the "#" in a keyboard-related German publication I have to make. On my Norwegian Mac keyboard, I must type Option+Shift+A to get the ◊. And the difficult shortcut is another indication that it is not used very often. -- leif halvard silli
