> How to write a mail like this: > "When you arrive at Madrid airport, follow the sign that looks like this: [?]" > Even if the font library supports all needed symbols, it will be easier to > send a photo than to choose the sign from a huge Unicode symbols list.
Yep. This discussion about signs is inherently open-ended, and I do not share Andreas' sanguinity about how amenable this area is to organized research and classification. Sure, you can always collect and classify signs and their use, but that basically doesn't even begin to touch the question of appropriateness for encoding as characters. Essentially we are talking about entirely different *modes* of symbolic communication here, and they cannot (imo) be mapped one-to-one into character encodings. Any particular collection of such signs starts off with the obvious symbols that are *already* encoded as characters, shades off into stuff we could have arguments about appropriateness for symbols encoded as characters, and there very quickly veers into total pictorial crazyland. Take any particular collection of airport signage you want, for example. There are bezillions of examples to choose from, say: http://www.mie.ie/staff/aegan1/airport%20signage.jpg Where do you start? Where do you stop? I contend there is not and cannot be any definitive answer. The domains and modes are different here, by their very nature. What signage does is usually *better* handled by the appropriate technology of images, rather than the inappropriate technology of characters, although everybody can agree that there is an overlapping area where *some* pictographic symbols can and should be handled as encoded characters. --Ken
