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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Jorge Stolfi (talk | contribs) at 14:58, 30 April 2019 (→Proposed moves of unicode block articles: new section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress which affects this page. Please participate at Talk:C0 Controls and Basic Latin - Requested move and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RM bot 16:21, 22 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unicode block test page

Unicode 3.2 test page is a web page that shows example characters from each unicode block.

217.41.116.114 (talk) 09:07, 30 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Consistency Question

The article says a contiguous block of code points starts with nnn0 and ends with nnnF -- Earlier nnnn was described as a sequence of decimal numbers. Should the code points start with hhh0 and end with hhhF, instead? Hmoulding (talk) 14:11, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree it should, mainly because nnnn is specifically used for decimal digits in the preceding section. I've updated the page. DRMcCreedy (talk) 16:06, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed moves of unicode block articles

A little more than half of the articles about unicode character blocks have the qualifier "(Unicode block)", the others don't. I propose to rename the latter so that all of them do. Here are some reasons:

  1. The current names are not descriptive of the subjects. A name like "Control Pictures", "Geometric Shapes", "Mathematical Operators", "Greek and Coptic" or even "Latin Extended-B" gives no clue that the topic of the article is a section of a specific computer character set.
  2. The current names are not specific to the subject of the article. Even names like "Greek Extended" or "Miscellaneous Symbols", that one could infer are about character encodings, could apply to other character sets, besides Unicode, that were in use in the rather recent past, and would still deserve articles of their own.
  3. The naming of the Unicode blocks is not consistent. The fact that only half of the articles have the "(Unicode block)" qualifier causes difficulties for editors and potential confusion for readers. For example, an editor intending to link to an article on the history and use of Braille system may link to Braille Patterns instead by mistake.
  4. The articles violate the Wikipedia standards for titles. Many of the unqualified Unicode block articles are in the plural, have unnecessary capitalizations, or violate the standards in other ways. For example, to satisfy the standards the article Mathematical Operators should be named Mathematical operator. But of course that is not the name of the Unicode block; and it is the name of an article with a very different subject. Adding the qualifier "(Unicode block)" would satisfy the naming standards, besides avoiding confusion.
  5. Those topics are not very notable and are only of specialized and ephemeral technical interest. The division of the Unicode character space into blocks is mostly an artifact of the way the Unicode consortium discusses, approves, and documents proposals to include characters. It has only tenuous (and often very questionable) connections to the history, usage, or semantics of those characters.
    The division is relevant only to those who are interested in the history of Unicode, or who intend to propose new symbols for it.
    The division is not relevant to users of Unicode. On the contrary, to find the Unicode for a desired glyph, like a special math symbol or a letter with a certain modifier, one should ignore the block division and use Google or some other generic search tool -- because one cannot tell which block that symbol has been put into.
    The division is not even useful to font designers. While at some point one would find computer fonts that were limited to one or two specific blocks, that has never been a rule, and fonts are increasingly cutting across the Unicode block boundaries.

Apparently the names above were assigned without the "(Unicode block)" because it was felt that the qualifier was unnecessary, since there was no other page in Wikipedia with that name. But that is not what "unnecessary" means. Most of the names above have a common-sense meaning that has nothing to do with Unicode; so a qualifier is necessary to differentiate them from those common meanings. If you say "Geeometric Patterns", "Number Forms", or "Greek and Coptic" to someone, even to a computer expert, the last thing she will think of is the Unicode block of that name.
--Jorge Stolfi (talk) 23:01, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

These articles are OK

These articles need renaming

These articles need to be renamed with the qualifier "(Unicode block)". In some cases the there may be a redirect from unqualified to qualified name. In other cases the redirect is inappropriate or superfluous, and should be deleted after fixing all its uses. Note that the search window will supply the "(Unicode block)" anyway.

Already renamed but improper redirects

These articles already have the "(Unicode block)" qualifier, but are accessed through an unqualified redirect. The redirect is inappropriate or superfluous, and should be deleted after fixing all its uses. Note that the search window will supply the "(Unicode block)" anyway.

Improperly merged articles

These articles were improperly merged into general articles about languages, scripts, etc. It is OK to have a section in those articles that shows the relevant Unicode characters. However, any additional information about the block --susch as the history of how the character was placed into Unicode -- must go into a separate "(Unicode block)" article. So these merges should be undone, leaving behind the bare table of characters.

Special cases

These articles need special handling, or different renaming action:

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