libertinus icon indicating copy to clipboard operation
libertinus copied to clipboard

U+2052 Commercial Minus Sign

Open iandoug opened this issue 3 years ago • 8 comments

Hi

For some season (possibly an error or finger trouble), Google Fonts includes U+2052 Commercial Minus Sign in their Plus, Pro and Expert standards. No other standards from Adobe, Microsoft, or SIL, include that point.

It looks like it is also the only point that is unique to these three standards. I've never actually encountered it in the real world.

Depending on the level you are aiming for for inclusion in Google Fonts, it will have to be added (or persuade them it should not be in the standards).

Cheers, Ian

iandoug avatar Feb 28 '21 21:02 iandoug

A commercial what? Add this to the small end of my list of assorted sized beefs with Google Fonts ;-)

cf. https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/12

alerque avatar Mar 01 '21 10:03 alerque

For the record: Google Fonts Glyph Sets

Crissov avatar Mar 01 '21 11:03 Crissov

I suspect the person that compiled their standards lists mistook it for a percentage sign.

Else maybe their programmers use it internally as a "special character used as a divider in .csv files 'cos no one is ever going to type it" in the same way that I use ¬ signs.

iandoug avatar Mar 01 '21 12:03 iandoug

It is or was used in Sweden (and perhaps other countries in that region) in two ways: as an equivalent of the minus sign, clearer and more conspicuous than a typewritten ‘-’; and in the margin of a letter to indicate that a document referred to in the text is included as an attachment. Its typed form in the days of typewriters was ‘./.’ .

kimmus avatar Mar 03 '21 02:03 kimmus

KDE CharPicker advises:

a common glyph variant and fallback representation looks like ./. may also be used as a dingbat to indicate correctness used in Finno-Ugric Phonetic Alphabet to indicate a related borrowed form with different sound

Which, together with @kimmus' comment, is hardly a convincing case for why Google put it in their Plus/Pro/Expert standards, while Adobe/Linotype/Microsoft/SIL and even the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative don't think it that important.

Conversely, Google completely ignores Actually Useful things like U+207B Superscript Minus.

FWIW, there are some fonts which include that point, the ones competing in the same space as this project include:

African Sans Alegreya AverageMono BabelStone Roman Bitstream Cyberbit Brill Computer Modern, New Computer Modern, Tex Gyre, etc (and Kurinto derivatives) Cantarell Code2000 Code2003 DejaVu EversonMono FreeMono FreeSans FreeSerif Helvetica Helvetica Neue Intel Clear Inter Junicode K1FS Kaius Kelvinch LeedsUni Lucida Grande Lucrecia Serif M 1p / M 2c / M 2p Microsoft Sans Serif Miedinger Book Montserrat Mplus 1p Noto NovaMono Old Standard P22 Underground Pro Book PragmataPro Quivira Roboto STIX SamsungOne Segoe Symbola TITUS Cyberbit Tahoma Times New Roman Tinos Vollkorn Work Sans XITS

Maybe some of the FOSS ones have suitable glyphs and licences ...

Cheers, Ian

iandoug avatar Mar 03 '21 19:03 iandoug

Okay after some research and thought, I think it would be good to include this code point at some time, not because it's in Google's standards, but because it's in STIX and Computer Modern. They probably had saner reasons for including it than Google.

Don't think it's urgent:-)

See separate rant about glyph list standards.

Cheers, Ian.

iandoug avatar Mar 06 '21 12:03 iandoug

See the discussion in the Unicode Consortium: https://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2014-m01/0018.html

KrasnayaPloshchad avatar Mar 24 '21 13:03 KrasnayaPloshchad

Even worse there's ⸓
U+2E13, Dotted Obelos ....

I couldn't quite follow how they see the commercial minus sign as a variant of ÷ U+00F7 ... that's a division sign to me and nothing to do with "minus" ...

Cheers, Ian

iandoug avatar Mar 24 '21 13:03 iandoug