On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 7:45 PM, Jukka K. Korpela <[email protected]>wrote:
> 2013-10-26 18:36, Sindre Sorhus wrote: > > There are: >> ⬅ LEFTWARDS BLACK ARROW (U+2B05) >> ⬆ UPWARDS BLACK ARROW (U+2B06) >> ⬇ DOWNWARDS BLACK ARROW (U+2B07) >> >> But no right arrow. Why is that? >> > > There is > ⬅ BLACK RIGHTWARDS ARROW (U+27A1) > The code chart at > http://www.unicode.org/charts/**PDF/U2B00.pdf<http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2B00.pdf> > has a cross reference to it, in the description of U+2B05. > > My guess is that U+27A1 was included along with other dingbat arrows > (which are mostly rightward-pointing arrowlike symbols) because it had been > included in legacy character codes. It was then regarded as unnecessary to > duplicate it in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows block. > > This is somewhat unfortunate. The code chart > http://www.unicode.org/charts/**PDF/U2700.pdf<http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2700.pdf> > says, in the description of U+27A1: “fonts may harmonize this glyph with > the style for other black arrows”. In practice, however, only few fonts > contain both U+27A1 and U+2B05, and in them, they tend to be rather > different in style. In the fonts in my system, only DejaVu Serif, Quivira, > and Segoe UI Symbol use the same style for both. Thanks, that confirms my suspicion :) That's unfortunate indeed. Is there any way to be able to get a proper RIGHTWARDS BLACK ARROW into Unicode? > > > These arrows are the most neutral and legible ones, so it's unfortunate >> that one is missing. >> > > Well, yes, for icon-like use they would be suitable if implemented > stylistically similarly and had shapes sufficiently resembling the > representative glyphs. But among the three fonts I mentioned, I think only > DejaVu Serif reflects the same design principles as the representative > glyphs. > > Not surprisingly, people mostly use images instead. > None of the fonts I've used made it it inverse-identical of the left one. Though doesn't help my use-case anyways as I'm using them in CLI apps where I can neither control the font or use images. > > Yucca > > > > > -- Sindre Sorhus sindresorhus.com
