[HN Gopher] Update: U+237C [?] &Angzarr;
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Update: U+237C [?] &Angzarr;
Author : g0xA52A2A
Score : 350 points
Date : 2023-06-17 12:13 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ionathan.ch)
(TXT) w3m dump (ionathan.ch)
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "Although the Type Archive, which held the Monotype
| Collection, is now shutting down..."_
|
| Boo. Can't someone like Adobe fund a historical archive like
| this. Photographs are not a replacement for the physical history
| of this vanished trade.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I think it's something the government should step in, not a
| private company.
| mihaic wrote:
| After decades of corporate propaganda, the mainstream view is
| that "goverment can't do anything".
|
| This has led to people expecting the rich to donate for this
| sort of outcome, instead of demanding better organization
| from the government that's eating away almost half their
| income.
|
| Rant asside, you're totally right.
| chongli wrote:
| Adobe could easily make a one-time donation of $millions to
| set up an endowment which would keep them running for the
| foreseeable future. The government could as well, I just see
| it as less likely. The government seems much more likely to
| maintain an active control over something like this, opening
| up the possibility of political interference in the future.
| kergonath wrote:
| A private company is more likely to use it for propaganda
| and marketing purposes. At least here government agencies
| have competent historians.
| timthorn wrote:
| My understanding is that the archive isn't being disposed of,
| but will be going into the Science Museum long term storage.
| The photographs are not intended as a replacement for the
| collections.
| Quarrel wrote:
| I (through my own ignorance?) haven't had much appreciation for
| this bit of history, but I recently visited the fascinating
| Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp.
|
| https://museumplantinmoretus.be/
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantin-Moretus_Museum
|
| They were a publisher and printing house in Antwerp, starting
| in the early waves of printing presses that swept Europe after
| Gutenberg.
|
| Amazingly, it stayed in the family and the family obviously had
| an incredible devotion to their origins, they have their
| original presses (thought to be the oldest in the world), their
| original type (their founder was a big believer in the power of
| good type and bought up the rights where he could), the
| original building, their original library. It is quite the
| adventure (in a totally nerdish but culturally significant
| way!).
|
| It was eventually sold to the city where it has been a museum
| ever since.
|
| Back to the topic at hand, I agree with you, can't someone
| acquire this??! :)
| javajosh wrote:
| I've often thought that the best Civilization would actively
| maintain living examples of each historical milieu. A stone
| age place and a middle ages place, a mid century place, and
| so on. In this way the methods and knowledge of the past
| would not be lost, and in the event of a calamity (like a
| Carrington event, or nuclear war), it would accelerate our
| recovery. Presumably the highest tech'd civ would impose
| order on the rest to prevent the stronger civs attacking the
| weaker ones (only the strongest civ could possibly enforce
| this).
|
| (The prospect of having to recapitulate the advances of the
| last 200 years fills me with indescribably weariness.
| Physical typesetting being a good example. Who is foolish
| enough to think you can "just read a book about it" and get a
| working press going?)
| runlaszlorun wrote:
| That's a great idea. A lot of things make a lot more sense
| when you can actually see the context they came from.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Indeed, we don't exactly treat our hunter-gatherers well.
| theK wrote:
| Interesting thought experiment. I'd wager there are equally
| interesting ethics challenges that would need addressing in
| order to actually do something like this well.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| _Unfortunately, as neither faculty nor a student at the
| University of Cambridge, according to the quote they've given me,
| requesting a digital copy of this document would cost 174PS_
|
| Maybe just do a go fund me or something to raise the 174PS? That
| is, if no students or faculty from the university of Cambridge
| see this and help.
| tux3 wrote:
| I was going to say the same. HN should make quick work of that,
| and even if it leads nowhere, the investigation is fascinating!
| pja wrote:
| Just post on r/cambridge and/or r/cambridge_uni reddit & ask if
| a current or ex-student or faculty member would be willing to
| request it from the stacks & make a copy.
|
| There's bound to be someone who'll drop in a request on their
| behalf.
| cxr wrote:
| <https://old.reddit.com/r/Scholar/> is what you want.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| reddit is deadit
| 2h wrote:
| No, it's not
|
| https://reddit.com/r/cambridge
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Yeah. I was being facetious. I just meant that many of us
| are avoiding it right now.
| masklinn wrote:
| Finding a Cambridge student or faculty willing to help doesn't
| seem like it'd be super hard, the university has 6000 academic
| staff and 25000 students.
|
| Even more so if alumni still have those accesses.
| justincormack wrote:
| Alumni do have access, so yeas lots more!
| [deleted]
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Cambridge alum here (for my BA in 2009) but I'm in CA now.
| Would be willing to try putting in the request. Not sure how to
| contact Jonathan Chan... I'm not on any of the social media he
| lists in his site footer... Anyone see an email for him? Edit:
| nevermind, found it. Emailing him
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Heard back. Turns out it has to be a current student,
| unfortunately. I'm sure he'll find somebody.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Cambridge alum here (for my BA in 2009) but I'm in CA now.
| Would be willing to try putting in the request. Not sure how
| to contact Jonathan Chan...
|
| Look at https://ionathan.ch/cv.html
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| > That is, if no students or faculty from the university of
| Cambridge see this and help.
|
| The author has said on Twitter that he already knows someone at
| Cambridge he could ask:
| https://twitter.com/ionathanch/status/1663423421831602178
| tekknolagi wrote:
| OP, if you are reading this, please contact me (email on website
| in bio). I would like to find a way to help fund the digital
| request to continue this research.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| An email address is here: https://ionathan.ch/cv.html
| migf wrote:
| To the emoji t-shirt mobile!!!
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| In case you didn't already heard from others, there's the
| http://xml.coverpages.org site hosting lots of pre-2000 material
| related to ISO 8879 (SGML) and XML. Although I didn't find too
| much on a quick ad-hoc search for ISO 9573, there's mention of
| angzarr in a preview version of ISO 9573 at
| http://xml.coverpages.org/ISO-PDTR-9573-13-2004.pdf by Martin
| Bryant and David Carlisle.
|
| There's also casual mention of ISO 9573 on historical
| comp.text.sgml Usenet archives.
|
| David and other people involved with SGML, MathML, and early
| entity sets for math (and chemical etc.) symbols are hanging
| around on the xml-dev mailing list (https://www.xml.org/xml-dev)
| and perhaps can tell more about the origin of that character
| (which looks more like a symbol for military or electrotechnical
| use to my totally uneducated eye).
|
| Also, there's a typo in your post: Belisage Conference ->
| Balisage Conference ;)
|
| Good luck.
| ionathan wrote:
| Whoops, thanks for catching that typo!
| nocoiner wrote:
| What's the potential copyright issue with the request to
| Cambridge?
|
| BTW, terrific detective work. I love mysteries like these.
| ionathan wrote:
| When I tried to request it via ILL, they told me that the
| amount of material scanned "exceeds copyright law and
| scanning limits". I haven't bothered to look up whatever
| law that is, and I'm not sure if it's a US thing, or if
| it's on the UK side, and if so, whether students/faculty at
| Cambridge are under the same restrictions and they'd have
| to end up paying the same fees as well. I have a friend
| whose advisor works there, but I'm reluctant to ask them
| for the favour and potentially drag them into numerous
| back-and-forth emails with Cambridge Library and copyright
| issues...
| moontear wrote:
| Just on copyright - all you want is to take a peek? It is
| not that you would have to share the complete scans with
| the world.
|
| Let's say the character means "X" and you can see it on
| some obscure page - could sharing that be a copyright
| issue?
| ionathan wrote:
| Here's what the Cambridge Library says [1] about scans:
|
| > Scans are provided with certain conditions of supply:
|
| > 1. Not pass on, or upload, the electronic copy or make
| it available to any other person
|
| > 2. Not make further printed or electronic copies
|
| :shrug:
|
| [1] https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/search-and-find/zero-
| contact-servi...
| klik99 wrote:
| I remember the previous post and find it weirdly compelling - the
| cruft and leftovers as technology evolves is interesting - it's
| like the appendix of monotype. I'm looking forward to the movie
| adaptation where he drives himself completely crazy trying to
| find out what the symbol means. I appreciate and can relate to
| this need to dig into minutiae.
| etothepii wrote:
| In order to make a Hollywood film it would need to turn out
| this was a message from The Creator.
| klik99 wrote:
| Pi 2: Right Angle with Downwards Zigzag Arrow
| DonHopkins wrote:
| The Story of Ampersand.
|
| https://sharegpt.com/c/J1U3T7m
| efaref wrote:
| > They conspired with a rogue hashtag
|
| ChatGPT thinks # is called "hashtag"? :(
| aardvark179 wrote:
| I'm sure somebody on here can help have a look. If you put in a
| scan and deliver request then apparently you aren't meant to
| share it with anybody else due to copyright, but I know somebody
| who could request it and I'm sure could find the symbol in there.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| I've asked a friend who is sort of kind of a faculty member; they
| may or may not be able to get access (they have a rather bespoke
| institutional status), so please other people keep trying!
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Is the article cut short?
|
| I thought there should be some content under heading "What now?".
|
| Very fascinating by the way, I remembered the original post.
| [deleted]
| ngvrnd wrote:
| Can we get the Guided By Voices logo added to unicode?
| http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7087/1132/1600/rune.1.jpg
| jwilk wrote:
| The previous post discussed on HN in 2022:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31012865 (295 comments)
| ezequiel-garzon wrote:
| Sort of related, could anyone please explain why there is a
| , named character reference in the HTML standard?
|
| https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/named-characters.html...
| whoopdedo wrote:
| The now deprecated FONT FACE attribute was defined as a comma-
| separated list of names. The entity was needed if you had a
| font name with a comma in it.
|
| Another comma-separated list is in the TH|TD AXIS attribute
| which is considered obsolete now. I found two other CSL
| attributes in APPLET ARCHIVE (depr.) and AREA COORDS but
| neither of them need a comma entity.
|
| So the comma entity exists only as a historical artifact.
| jwilk wrote:
| Couldn't you use , instead?
| bruce343434 wrote:
| Perhaps for usage as an escaped form of `,` in comma separated
| value tables? Although good question why it's in the _HTML_
| spec, pasting raw csv inside of an element and then needing to
| read it back seems like a rare use case.
| toast0 wrote:
| Why not? There's lots of named characters in the range of
| 0x20-0x2F, and symbols in general.
| ezequiel-garzon wrote:
| Those symbols (including comma) were added in later editions
| of the standard, and I'm sure there's a reason, but it seems
| to me if your keyboard has the characters & and ; it will
| also have , no? I mean, why not add &a; for a then?
| jwilk wrote:
| There's also ";" standing for ";", which makes even
| less sense to me.
| omoikane wrote:
| The "timeline" link in the article is broken (links to
| localhost:4000), correct link should be
|
| https://ionathan.ch/2022/04/09/angzarr.html#summary-timeline
| ionathan wrote:
| lmao silly mistake. I'll get that fixed, thanks
| amannm wrote:
| Also on the edge of my seat here, wondering what field it could
| be from. My ChatGPT-esque BS story is that this symbol was
| misplaced alongside more abstract math-y symbols and was actually
| briefly used in schematics to identify "lightning conductor"
| components shown here https://electrical-engineering-
| portal.com/wp-content/uploads... ... plausible, yes?
| contingencies wrote:
| Best theory yet.
| ionathan wrote:
| I've added a clarification to the end of the post on whether
| angzarr might be found in the Cambridge Library document, which I
| mentioned in my twitter thread but not in the post:
|
| > Furthermore, the Rare Books department tells me that
| "unfortunately none of [the materials] seem to mention S16137
| through S16237". It's possible the glyph is listed without its
| serial number, but it's equally possible that this document skips
| that range altogether, just as 4-Line Mathematics had.
|
| I'd also like to point out that Cambridge alumni are unlikely
| going to be able to request scans for free; I think you need to
| be a _current_ faculty or student.
| RugnirViking wrote:
| From the previous post a year or so back I thought the mystery
| was discovered that it was a new age druidic symbol someone had
| stuck in
| grose wrote:
| In a similar vein, there are kanji (Chinese characters) with
| unknown origins called "ghost kanji".
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JIS_X_0208#Kanji_from_unknown_...
| dboreham wrote:
| Since I just returned home to the US from a visit to Japan, I
| found that fascinating reading.
| contingencies wrote:
| There are also character variants. Sometimes between CJK, but
| also historic. I attended a conference at _Academica Sinica_ in
| Taipei with knowledgeable academic sorts circa 2001 who had
| apparently elucidated various issues with Unicode unification
| coming from the full range of prior encodings, fonts,
| dictionaries, input systems and mechanical typesetting systems.
| eterevsky wrote:
| I like how the kanji in the table are classified into 3
| categories: Unknown, Source unclear and Unidentifiable.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| and those that belong to the emperor, I presume.
| pushedx wrote:
| I wonder if this is some sort of "signature character", that the
| designer would use to discover if their work had been lifted,
| possibly dating back centuries.
| yosito wrote:
| [flagged]
| HappyPanacea wrote:
| The author is a PhD student therefore he will be time-rich but
| money-poor so it is not surprising as you think.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Is it weird to you that some people make less money than you?
| msla wrote:
| What's bizarre to me is that they're using British currency but
| putting the currency sign at the end of the numbers.
| LukeShu wrote:
| It might not have the answers he's looking for. When I've gone
| on such hunts, yeah, any one cost isn't so bad, but if I open
| that box of paying for documents, I could _easily_ drop
| thousands of dollars and not actually be any closer to the
| answer.
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(page generated 2023-06-17 23:00 UTC)