On 31 May 2012, at 17:19, Asmus Freytag wrote: > Some of them can be substituted and will be recognized by all as "jolly > roger", others will not. > > The former set "may" be glyph variants - that is, if there's no contrastive > usage, the latter cannot be.
They are logos for the actual dead pirate captains. They are glyph variants of "pirate flag" otherwise. Some are just obscure glyph variants. > In this case, on top of that, many represent symbols identifying particular > bands, captains or ships (or nowadays, movie cycles). As such they resemble > the distinguishing function of national flags. Then, yes, but now we do have a notion of "pirate flag" which is basically black with a skull and crossbones on it. Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
