On 13 Aug 2012, at 14:04, Karl Pentzlin wrote: > 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.
Good luck? > 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. I don't think so. At http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raute_(Symbol) you will see that # is named "Doppelkreuz", and ◊ is named "Raute" and indicates "Subtotal". > (The name "Raute" for "#" seems to derive from the International > Telecommunication Union standard ITU-T E.161, which requires the name > "square, or the most commonly used equivalent term in other languages" for > the sign on the lower right corner of 12-key telephone keypads, which is > translated into "Raute" instead of literally "Quadrat". The term "square" is > also used that way in the name of U+2317 VIEWDATA SQUARE, which is a > "straight #" like it is in fact shown on > most telephone keypads.) Again, this does not seem to make sense given the use of # and ◊ and * on that 1970 adding machine. Perhaps that was a translation error in the ITU standard; http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raute_(Symbol)#Raute_und_Doppelkreuz does address this, though I don't know if it addresses it in a satisfactory way. Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
