Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Typography/Unicode: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 05:07, 22 June 2009

Latest revision as of 14:35, 10 June 2024

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(This part of the discussion took place after it was moved to a separate page by DragonHawk on 22 June 2009.)

=== Hex prefix ===

I continue to disagree with the removal of the U+ prefix from the hex column. It does not prevent sorting (though other prefixes do) and it is not terribly difficult to copy just the hex digits to another context when doing copy and paste. In favor of keeping the U+ prefix is that it is used by the Unicode standard to designate a Unicode character. [[User:John Sauter|John Sauter]] ([[User talk:John Sauter|talk]]) 05:07, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

:Sorry, I didn't realize you (or anyone else) felt that strongly about it. Originally you had just said the numbers should be prefixed, so that seemed a lot less directed, especially when some of the suggested prefixes implied a context like HTML, or prefixes for decimal expressions. If it will sort properly, I think it's reasonable to go with what the Unicode standard uses. • I'd like to see thoughts from more people, just on general principles, but this is probably sufficiently esoteric for that to be unlikely. —<small>[[User:DragonHawk|DragonHawk]] ([[User talk:DragonHawk|talk]]|[[Special:Contributions/DragonHawk|hist]])</small> 11:59, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

=== Font choice ===

In addition, there is the problem of choosing a font. Some Unicode characters are so obscure that probably nobody would know whether they had been rendered using Bitstream Vera Serif or Century Schoolbook L, but a standard for describing Unicode characters must deal in a reasonable way with all Unicode characters, not just the obscure ones. I suggest that the default font for displaying a Unicode character should be the [[FreeSerif]] font distributed with OpenOffice. It seems to match the images published in the Unicode standard reasonably well, and it contains quite a lot of characters. Of course, for the obscure characters we are lucky to find any font which contains the character; I am only suggesting that [[FreeSerif]] be the display font when it is a reasonable choice. [[User:John Sauter|John Sauter]] ([[User talk:John Sauter|talk]]) 05:07, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

:Just to be clear, here: Are you referring to the font specified in CSS for rendering literal Unicode characters from the HTML from Wikipedia, or are you referring to the font we should use to render the sample glyph images? —<small>[[User:DragonHawk|DragonHawk]] ([[User talk:DragonHawk|talk]]|[[Special:Contributions/DragonHawk|hist]])</small> 12:03, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

::I was referring to the font we should use to render the sample glyph images. The font used to render characters in an article should be the choice of the article writer based on the needs of the subject, whether the characters are rendered using Unicode notation or not. However, if an article writer gets frustrated because his characters do not appear in most people's browsers, this page would be a good place to give him advice on how to fix that problem. [[User:John Sauter|John Sauter]] ([[User talk:John Sauter|talk]]) 13:14, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

:::That's what I thought, I just wanted to make sure. :) And I agree completely. Font choice in articles isn't something we should dictate here. I also like the idea of using a free font for the sample renderings; I think it's good for Wikipedia to be as "free as possible", regardless of the legal status of font copyright. • If you think FreeSerif is the font to use, I'm perfectly willing to take your word for it. :) • Using one font for most would also let us dodge the issue of different fonts for different characters. We could name each image something like <code>FreeSerif_U+1234.svg</code>. Other fonts may place different glyphs there, but there's only one FreeSerif. —<small>[[User:DragonHawk|DragonHawk]] ([[User talk:DragonHawk|talk]]|[[Special:Contributions/DragonHawk|hist]])</small> 02:11, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

=== Standard Explanation ===

A wiki is a great place to polish an explanation. Let's discuss the standard explanation here, and put the consensus result in the article. Here is my suggestion, to get things started. "The Char column shows how the Unicode character would look in your browser when in an article. You can copy-and-paste the character from there. The Image column shows the standard image of the character, for comparison. Name is the Unicode name of the character. Hex and Decimal are the numeric code point for the character in the Unicode character set. The "U+" prefix in the Hex column is from the Unicode standard. See [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Typography/Unicode]] for further details." [[User:John Sauter|John Sauter]] ([[User talk:John Sauter|talk]]) 21:22, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

:Good idea! I copied that to [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Typography/Unicode#Legend|a section in the projectpage]], and started tweaking. I took out some mentions of Unicode, since that's implied by context. I took out the cut-and-paste note. Anyone who wants to do that should be able to figure it out on their own; the design docs mention it so other Wikipedians know to maintain the feature. I turned the part about U+ into a wikilink. And so on.

:I'm still not sure how to actually present this legend in articles, though. I imaging we could put it in a template and include the template before/after every Unicode table. That would be clear and obvious, which is good, but it might be ugly and waste space, too. Perhaps some kind of JavaScript to collapse the legend by default? (No JavaScript just means it is expanded by default.) Another option would be a wikilink to the legend, perhaps from the table headers, or just before/after the table. But I'm not sure where to keep the target of the wikilink ([[WP:namespace]], page name, etc.). I'd be interested in hearing your (or others') thoughts on this. —<small>[[User:DragonHawk|DragonHawk]] ([[User talk:DragonHawk|talk]]|[[Special:Contributions/DragonHawk|hist]])</small> 01:44, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

::Perhaps the information could be presented as a sidebar. I've done that with images in the OCR-A article, but I'm not sure how to do it with text. [[User:John Sauter|John Sauter]] ([[User talk:John Sauter|talk]]) 02:03, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

=== Image Column ===

I agree that if no image of a Unicode character exists, this column must be left blank. However, I think that should almost never be the case, and that much useful information is lost when no image is available. We should encourage the table author to find or create a suitable image, perhaps by giving some suggestions, or even tutorials, in this page. For example, when I needed images of the OCR-A characters, I rendered the characters at 1000 points, then traced the outlines to produce svg files. Another method would be to trace the outline of the sample characters in the Unicode standard. [[User:John Sauter|John Sauter]] ([[User talk:John Sauter|talk]]) 02:03, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

:Agreed on should-always-have-an-image, and adding docs to the project page that explain how-to to editors. • It should be possible to script the process of rendering and tracing each character in InkScape. That would let us auto-generate a few thousand glyphs to start with. I'll ask around my local Linux User Group, see if anyone there knows anything about InkScape scripting. —<small>[[User:DragonHawk|DragonHawk]] ([[User talk:DragonHawk|talk]]|[[Special:Contributions/DragonHawk|hist]])</small> 02:16, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

== Redirects from CJK compatibility characters ==

I have been adding redirects from [[CJK Compatibility]] characters to appropriate articles or Wiktionary if I don't find one.

There is a discussion about it in [[Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2024_June_10#㌽]] if you want to voice your opinion.

-- [[User:Error|Error]] ([[User talk:Error|talk]]) 14:35, 10 June 2024 (UTC)