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samhocevar
Music sharp symbol in wrong category
I discovered I can type the music sharp sign (♯, UTF-266F) using compose # #.
When I went searching for this in the help, I couldn't find it under Musical Symbols.
It turns out, it was under Math for some reason. It would be nice to move it and the flat sign (â™, U+266D) along with it, and anything else that's somehow under Math.
I was also surprised to find that flat was compose # b instead of compose b b but I guess that just comes down to personal preference and it's something I'm fine with changing myself.
Unfortunately the Unicode standard specifies that ♯ is in the Math Symbols category (see https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+266F) and WinCompose relies on these category descriptions.
It would be possible to create alternate categories but that would be a lot of work on my part to categorize all symbols, so it’ll have low priority. I may add a tag system that would let the user categorize them, though.
I have sent an email to Unicode suggesting recategorisation of the several symbols in the area.
This is a bit more complex. There is NO 'Musical Symbols' category in Unicode AFAICT. https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/category
The alternative category is most likely 'Other Symbols', however, that is very generic. And there is a somewhat esoteric Mathematical use of both the sharp and flat signs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_isomorphism
So regardless, they should both be in the same category! (whichever that one is)
@hakanai perhaps suggest to them that they add a 'Music Symbols' category since there are many relevant characters: https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/search?q=music#characters https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/block/U+1D200 and more… But I expect they have already discussed something like that, or at least, what their policy is for adding symbol categories, more than once.
Any such changes will likely take a very long time.
It is not possible (AFAIK) to move symbols between Unicode blocks, so it would not, for example, be possible to ever move the sharp sign from Basic Multilingual Plane / Miscellaneous Symbols to Supplementary Multilingual Plane / Musical Symbols
In my experience, the best way to find anything in Unicode is normally keyword search on the character name (and character name aliases). That said, I've yet to find any Unicode search website where a search for eg music sign includes music sharp sign U+266F in the results. At least this works as expected in WinCompose!
Absolutely, keyword search is the only way to go for finding characters. It's once you find the character and start looking around that you start to notice the other inconsistencies.
The reply from Ken Whistler was along the same lines, as one would expect - it's a complicated situation.
Super relevant to this application, though, is Technical Note 36.
This carries with it, a useful data file for categories, where, lo and behold, Sharp and Flat are tagged with "Music". Perhaps WinCompose could make use of this additional data?
I discovered I can type the music sharp sign (♯, UTF-266F) using
compose##.When I went searching for this in the help, I couldn't find it under Musical Symbols.
It turns out, it was under Math for some reason. It would be nice to move it and the flat sign (â™, U+266D) along with it, and anything else that's somehow under Math.
The "Musical Symbols" block is for use on score writing software like MuseScore. It's not meant for use in plaintext, so there's no point having sequences for any ow those symbols in the first place...
Are you saying that Unicode has no codepoint for a flat symbol? â™ being in the block you think you'd never need to type, but I have.
Are you saying that Unicode has no codepoint for a flat symbol? â™ being in the block you think you'd never need to type, but I have.
U+266D is in Misc Symbols. The simple flat seems to not have a twin inside the Musical Symbols block unlike quarter notes, eighth notes, and sixteenth notes.
Right, and what I had been saying was confusing is that Sharp and Flat aren't in the same block or even same category, even though they are literally opposites of each other. :(
So it's certainly true that if you already know what you are searching for then yes, you can just type 'sharp' or 'flat' in the search box and it will find it - but for discoverability it's bad because if you already know where 'sharp' is and go there to find related symbols, you won't find the related symbols.
(And I think literally any casual user would assume that musical symbols would be in Musical Symbols!)