On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 06:30:37PM +0000, Whistler, Ken wrote: > > Could the characters SWR2 to SWR8 be applied to chess symbols or should > > new rotation modifiers be created for them? > > They aren't currently defined to do so -- and there is certainly a danger in > opening up the applicability to other sets of symbols, as that would start > down the road of trying to turn them into generic rotation mechanisms. > > I'm inclined here to trust Garth's assessment that for a relatively small > set of rotated chess symbols, the simpler solution is just to enumerate > the set of rotated forms needed for these odd chess notations as > unitary symbols. I just wanted to make sure that the precedent for > SignWriting was part of the consideration, given the fact that > a notation involving rotation of symbols was the topic.
Sorry, I had no time (and no clear way to express things) when what I’m going to write could have been more relevant — anyway, this is about SignWriting. I consider the precedent of SignWriting as an especially bad model to become a base for other encodings of extensive collections — and not since it uses “many mechanisms”, but FEW mechanisms. I think that the same functionality could have been implemented using a tiny handful of new characters — while making the encoded SignWriting text readable EVEN WITHOUT SPECIAL FONTS and/or shaping engines. See, for example, the Mr Potato Head font http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2014-m09/0003.html ; using the same principles, one could encode most (all?) of the hand symbols as SignWriting FACE STARTER CHARACTER + upper/lower-script modifiers For example, hand with fingers 1,2 extended, 3,4 crossed, and 5 bent halfway could have been encoded as ☆¹²³ˣ⁴⁵ᶜ A specialized font would show the needed glyph. Without a specialized font, one could see a representation which allows one able to visualize the shape — and, at least, see a certain distinctive rendition. As far as I checked (about 60% into the SignWriting proposal) this approach would enable all of SignWriting functionality with about 10 base characters needed. As for rotation modifiers, we already have 24 (?) clock face symbols — and they allow granularity of 15° when specifying the rotation. Yous, Ilya _______________________________________________ Unicode mailing list [email protected] http://unicode.org/mailman/listinfo/unicode
