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Every character has a story #31: U+272f0 from CJK Extension B, an ideograph that proves that every rose has its thorn! (aka It wasn't my fault, but [from the Windows standpoint] it was because of me....)

Yes, the end of the title is an allusion to a late 80s Poison power ballad based on a Bret Michaels love affair that did not work out (due to a philandering lady, in that case). The other day, I posted How bad does it need to be in order to be not good Read More...
Posted Monday, December 03, 2007 6:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

Microsoft is a Form 'C' shop, Part 1

Microsoft has had Unicode as a part of its operating system offerings since the easrliest days of its 32-bit platforms. And a lot that support predates asnything that Unicode later chose to provide, thus we don't use the Unicode Collation Algorithm for Read More...
Posted Monday, October 29, 2007 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Tell them to GO FISH?, aka Carpe Carp [Sarcalogos] (Seize the [Christian] Fish), aka Unicode List (where characters discuss character encoding)

If you are a member of the Unicode List , and you do not have any real sense of what you should or should not contribute, then it is worth realizing that you have no disadvantage compared to the people who do contribute regularly -- they don't know much Read More...
Posted Monday, October 01, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Every character[ sequence] has a story #30: The SMILEY (a 25-year old story, in fact)

Given all of the blather about emoji and emoticons and symbols, the mail I got from Sergey earlier today puts in all in perspective. It had the following in it: Note the date and time, and when this post goes live. For more on Scott and Smiley lore, see Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 19, 2007 11:44 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Every character has a story #29: U+1000^H^H^H^H0f40, (TIBETAN or MYANMAR LETTER KA, depending on when you ask)

So I was chatting with Goldie the other day and I think just after or maybe it was just before I made some ridiculous stretch of a joke joke about Anatevka (forgetting momentarily that she did not go by Golde; her nom de plume was Goldie) she asked me Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 28, 2007 12:59 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

Every character has a story #28: U+1e9e (CAPITAL SHARP S)

That night I saw in the pipeline fair A character that wasn't there Non-existence won't stop the encoding; it's true So it's coming soon to a Unicode near you! It all started with Every character has a story #15: CAPITAL SHARP S (not encoded) , and then Read More...
Posted Friday, August 24, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

Fractions may be your friends, but they won't pick you up at the airport!

To me, fractions will always have a special place. The teacher pointed out we all knew what ½ was, and we all knew what 0.5 was, and we all knew about division. Then he blew my mind when he pointed out they were not connected because they were multiple Read More...
Posted Saturday, July 14, 2007 12:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Every character has a story #26: CAPITAL SHARP S (might be encoded?)

(ref: Every character has a story #15: CAPITAL SHARP S (not encoded) ) When Michel Suignard came back from the WG2 meeting, I scooted over to get the quick word on what interesting things happened.... I was surprised to hear that the Capital Sharp S was Read More...
Posted Thursday, May 03, 2007 12:15 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

Every character has a story #25: U+00a4 (CURRENCY SYMBOL)

(Don't these 'Every character has a story' posts remind you of a Colbert-esque Better Know a District series? Maybe I should rename the series to Better Know a Character . What does everyone think?) Just recently, John asked: Just a quick question I can't Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 15, 2007 1:39 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 11 Comments

Every character has a story #24: U+0308 (COMBINING DIAERESIS)

I am reminded of a scene from the 1991 film The Doctor starring William Hurt, modified here to be a bit more linguistic than medical: Linguist : Nancy, are my repeated vowels pronounced differently? Nancy: No, doctor. Linguist: That's funny, I always Read More...
Posted Monday, September 04, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 24 Comments

Every character has a story #23: U+00ad (SOFT HYPHEN)

Last night I was upon the stair A little hyphen that wasn't there. It wasn't there again today; Oh how I wish he'd go away! The SOFT HYPHEN has a long if not entirely distinguished history. It starts back in ISO 8859-1 , which puts it at 0xAD, and in Read More...
Posted Saturday, September 02, 2006 10:34 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

Every character has a story #22: U+0c27 (CARON)

The CARON has a long and unhappy history, one that is tied up with that whole Sk / Lm general category thing I talked about in this post . Ken Whistler laid it out for the CARON just recently, starting with the meandering path through UnicodeData.txt: Read More...
Posted Monday, August 14, 2006 12:21 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Every character has a story #21: U+0f77 U+0f79 (TIBETAN VOWEL SIGN VOCALIC [RR|LL])

Peter Constable asked some Unicode folks: I’m just curious to know why 0f77 and 0f79 were given compatibility decompositions rather than canonical decompositions? (I don’t see any obvious reason why canonical decompositions would not have been feasible.) Read More...
Posted Wednesday, June 28, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Every character has a story #20: U+210e (PLANCK CONSTANT)

Unicode is a standard that fits all kinds of different needs. Obviously the need to represent text that may contain important symbols used in science has always been important. At some fundamental level, the identity of that symbol goes beyond an italicized Read More...
Posted Friday, April 21, 2006 12:00 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Every character has a story; some of them have cartoons!

Adam Hill contacted me via that contact link to point out Hacklog (Blogamundo) . With a subtitle like "Poking holes in the language barrier since approximately one month from now" I guess it is saying something interesting! A quick perusal shows lots Read More...
Posted Friday, April 14, 2006 10:20 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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