Unicode alias names and abbreviations: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:57, 13 September 2022

Revision as of 22:27, 13 September 2022

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==Background==

The formal, primary Unicode name is unique over all names, only uses certain characters & format, and is guaranteed never to change. The formal name consists of characters A–Z (uppercase), 0–9, " " (space), and "-" (hyphen).

Next to this name, a character can have one or more formal (normative) '''alias names'''. Such an alias name also follows the rules of a name: characters used (A-Z, -, 0-9, &lt;space>) and not used (a-z, %, $, etc.). Alias names are also unique in the full name set (that is, all names and alias names are all unique in their combined set). Alias names are formally described in the Unicode Standard.<ref name="NameAliases">{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/Public/1415.0.0/ucd/NameAliases.txt |title=NameAliases-1415.0.0.txt|access-date=20212022-09-1413|date=20202022-1007-2126|publisher=The Unicode Consortium}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode14Unicode15.0.0/ch24.pdf|title=The Unicode Standard|version=1415.0.0|publisher=The Unicode Consortium|isbn=978-1-936213-29-032|date=20212022}}</ref> In this sense, an abbreviation is also considered a Unicode ''name''.

==Reason to add an alias==

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;1. Abbreviation

:Commonly occurring abbreviations (or acronyms) for control codes, format characters, spaces, and variation selectors.

:There are 353354 such aliases, including 256 aliases for variant selectors (VS-1 ... VS-256).

:For example, {{unichar|00A0|no-break space}} has alias {{smallcaps|NBSP}}.

:Presentation: in the code charts, the abbreviation is shown in a dashed box: {{Unicode alias/abbrbox|abbr=NBSP|title=no-break space}}.