mccThis is a very funny page https://unicode-explorer.com/list/large
SnoopJ@mcc the glyph '﷽' was mentioned in a discussion I saw recently about computing character widths as *rendered* in a terminal, and fundamental futility of this task
ROTOPE~1 ⭐️@rotopenguin @mcc alas, the Unicode Consortium has limited authority over the evolution of human language in general
@SnoopJ @rotopenguin in my opinion, they have much more than they should
@mcc @rotopenguin oh? Anything in particular?
@SnoopJ @rotopenguin Well, for example, if the people of China decide to invent a new hanzi, effectively now they just can't
Or they can, but they have to ask someone for permission. They'd have to do some complex set of steps with a PUA codepoint. Before computer encoding they could just draw it
@mcc @rotopenguin nothing stops them from doing it and not encoding it (e.g. seal forms) but sure the reality is that someone's gonna want to put the thing on the computer at some point, and someone's gonna be in charge of that encoding. Not sure that problem has any solution other than "fuck it all text is purely graphical now"
I'd point to U+32FF SQUARE ERA NAME REIWA as an example of UTC acting in good faith here, but I don't follow along very closely with the massive volume of communication with their colleagues working on standards bodies in China. What I have read makes it seem like a pretty good working relationship
Cassandra is only carbon now@SnoopJ @mcc @rotopenguin With respect to "fuck it, text is graphical," can custom emoji such as those on Mastodon or Discord (intentionally picking two wildly divergent examples here) be an imperfect and limited kind of escape hatch?
I think to all the controversies about adding the Cool S to Unicode, which seems like a quintessential example of spontaneous new language development without governmental recognition that Unicode can work from?
@xgranade @mcc @rotopenguin I think so, at the expense of most of the "directly represented in the data" semantics. Or at least, it's *much* harder to encode those alongside a visual representation.
I'm not aware of any proposal for cool S or controversy about same, but that's absolutely My Bullshit, do you happen to have a pointer to more reading handy?
@SnoopJ @mcc @rotopenguin I don't have one handy, sorry, remembering something (possibly misremembering even) I read a couple years ago.
Clifton Royston@xgranade @SnoopJ @mcc @rotopenguin
You're not misremembering; I saw it discussed here at some point in the last couple years, with someone sharing a link to the formal submission of the "cool S" proposal to the Unicode committee and some of the comments on it.