Tuesday, August 19, 2003
What I'd really like to see is a list of every Unicode code point assignment, with information about exactly what vendor's proprietary system contributed that character to Unicode in the first place, and what it was used for there.
For instance, it is obvious to anybody who remembers the BBS days that many of the Block Element characters all came from the IBM PC (or MS-DOS) character set, aka cp437. I am pretty sure, because I am familiar with these characters, that they were deliberately put into Unicode for compatibility with old PC software.
Now, if I didn't know this, how would I have looked it up? For instance, I'd like to know what the hell pre-existing system (if any) had a Hammer and Sickle symbol (U+262D). Some proprietary OS used on the Kremvax, perhaps?
Also, even though I am pretty sure that the "house" character (U+2302, or ⌂ if your browser has a glyph for it) came from the IBM PC, where in world can I find out what IBM actually thought the character was supposed to used for? For making actual little bitty houses in character-based games?
For instance, it is obvious to anybody who remembers the BBS days that many of the Block Element characters all came from the IBM PC (or MS-DOS) character set, aka cp437. I am pretty sure, because I am familiar with these characters, that they were deliberately put into Unicode for compatibility with old PC software.
Now, if I didn't know this, how would I have looked it up? For instance, I'd like to know what the hell pre-existing system (if any) had a Hammer and Sickle symbol (U+262D). Some proprietary OS used on the Kremvax, perhaps?
Also, even though I am pretty sure that the "house" character (U+2302, or ⌂ if your browser has a glyph for it) came from the IBM PC, where in world can I find out what IBM actually thought the character was supposed to used for? For making actual little bitty houses in character-based games?
