The BCDIC Delta was normally a non-printing sign, that is the Delta sign was
used to represent an invisible, unprintable bit (or punch card hole)
combination.
See http://www.qsm.co.il/Hebrew/HebKey.htm - unfortunately it is in Hebrew. The
characters on the right in red are cannot be printed on the 1401. Remember,
there were no displays then.
Jony
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doug Ewell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Friday, November 17, 2000 6:37 PM
> To: Unicode List
> Subject: Re: Characters in early sets
>
>
> Jukka Korpela <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > My conclusion is that when a delta-like character is used as a
> > mathematical operator, such as the Laplacian or difference operator,
> > and not as a letter, it should be treated as U+2206 in Unicode.
> > However, if you're using, say, capital alpha, beta, gamma, delta, ...
> > as symbols of quantities just as A, B, C, ... can be used, then the
> > characters should probably be regarded as Greek letters.
>
> But what's interesting about the use of Greek delta and other such
> characters in BCDIC (etc.) is that they were *not* intended either as
> mathematical operators, symbols of quantities, or building blocks for
> composing Greek text. Rather, they seem to have been chosen solely
> for their value as "strange glyphs" that would carry no meaning at all!
>
> In this context, it is hard to tell which of the two Unicode characters
> (U+0394 or U+2206), both of which carry a definite meaning, should be
> used to convey this "strange glyph" pseudo-meaning.
>
> -Doug Ewell
> Fullerton, California
