[HN Gopher] Fleuron (typography) ___________________________________________________________________ Fleuron (typography) Author : surprisetalk Score : 57 points Date : 2023-10-07 12:33 UTC (10 hours ago) (HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org) (TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org) | y04nn wrote: | In LaTeX you have the pgfornament package [1] that allow you to | do nice things. | | [1](pdf): | https://ctan.math.illinois.edu/macros/latex/contrib/tkz/pgfo... | swayvil wrote: | Clearly we need a kisrhombille-tessellation based fleuron | building system. | seabass-labrax wrote: | Is it just me who doesn't like fleurons? For me, they are in an | awkward limbo between abstract symbology and realistic | illustrations, and draw an unreasonable amount of attention to | themselves compared to other forms of decoration. | | Generally, I would prefer that whitespace alone be used to | separate paragraphs, and more significant sections be demarcated | by headings, which can be embellished less intrusively by use of | a decorative typeface, underlining or colour. | benj111 wrote: | They mention using it as a punctuation mark, but surely it must | be distinct from other punctuation marks to deserve its own | unicode point, further they must differ from each other to | deserve their own unicode points. | | Surely this deserves to be on the font rendering side, not the | unicode side? | compiler-guy wrote: | The term "fleuron" describes something more like the term | "emoji" than it does a particular punctution mark. Yes, | fleurons are often used for ending sentences. But they function | more as a decoration that happens to go there than as a period | or question mark. | | Sure, I can imagine a single emoji in all of unicode, just pick | a different font for whatever particular one you want to use. | But much easier and more logical to have a wide variety of them | available to you that roughly matches your current font. | jahewson wrote: | Looks like quite a few of these arrived with the addition of | the historical Manichaean script in which "there are several | punctuation-marks to indicate headlines, page-divisions, | sentence-divisions, and others". | bazoom42 wrote: | They probably "deserve" to have unicode code points because | they existed in pre-unicode character sets. | derefr wrote: | I've seen fleurons used in blog posts as _end of article_ mark. | It 's sort of a generic sign-off / chop, stuck inline to the | last paragraph of the text. Usually, when used this way, | they'll be styled in a different, lighter color than the text | before them. | | Obviously, an "end of article" marker isn't a thing that needs | to exist -- you know the article is over because there's no | more article! But people putting extra "stuff" inline at the | end of the last paragraph of an article, has a long history in | printing anyway. Because people can be extra, and I suppose | Unicode should support encoding the extravagancies of existing | historical documents. | benj111 wrote: | Ok, an end of article marker is fine. | | But it doesn't mean we need multiple code points meaning the | same thing. | | An a is an a regardless of whether it serif or sans, whether | it has the thing on the top like a floppy d (edit: the | unfortunate comparison wasn't intentional). | 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: | It's not always obvious the article is over these days. | Sometimes they run sneaky ads afterwards. | joe__f wrote: | So it's basically a flower emoji? | perihelions wrote: | Maybe Unicode should add a new code block for these fleurons. | They'd all be combining-characters, and you would build | effectively a mini-DSL for describing fleurons as geometric | compositions of radicals. | california-og wrote: | Any complex combination or arrangement of fleurons or other | type ornament is not really possible with any contemporary word | processor for one good reason: type is not set by hand anymore. | Precise but free placement of glyphs is tedious if not | impossible. It would require a whole new paradigm of setting | type, one that would be based on modularity and strict | typographic measurement system. A digital letterpress system if | you will. The closest we've had that digitally was probably | textmode and ASCII art. | surprisetalk wrote: | I ADORE this idea. | | I wonder how far one could take it with just ligatures? | LoganDark wrote: | Font shapers would definitely have one of the moments of all | time with this one. | lopis wrote: | > I wonder how far one could take it with just ligatures? | | Very, very far... | | https://blog.erk.dev/posts/anifont/ | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF2sn2DXjlA | derefr wrote: | So like | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideographic_Description_Charac... | , but instead of describing the compositions, they actually | perform them? | graypegg wrote: | Oh wow that's interesting. Would be interesting if it | actually performed the change, and on any character. Pointing | emojis in the right direction with the Horizontal Reflection | modifier would probably be useful! | perihelions wrote: | Unicode doesn't perform it, but I understand it's | straightforward to typeset it in, for example, TeX/MetaPost: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36809624 ( _" | Typesetting Rare Chinese Characters in LATEX"_) | crazygringo wrote: | That would totally break the basic conceptions of line height | and font size though. The fleuron in the top image is probably | five lines tall. | | Arranging fleurons is great, but that seems it should belong to | the realm of word processing layout or drawing program | arrangement, not something at the Unicode/font level. | | Complex fleurons aren't graphemes; they're illustration. | orbital-decay wrote: | It's pretty much on the Unicode level. Its goal is to support | world's writing systems - current, extinct, and even | fictional. | | _> Complex fleurons aren 't graphemes; they're | illustration._ | | The line between writing systems and illustrations is pretty | blurred, if you look closely enough. Especially now, with | composable and even AI-generated emoji. (I wonder if they | regret including emoji now...) | bsza wrote: | > That would totally break the basic conceptions of line | height and font size though | | So do [combining characters], yet they're valid Unicode. | dang wrote: | Please don't zalgo on HN. It makes the thread less readable | and thus the discussion less interesting. | | Edit: I've scrubbed it out of your comment and put the | formerly zalgoed text in [square brackets]. | greenyoda wrote: | For those not familiar with the term "zalgo": | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zalgo_text | crazygringo wrote: | No they don't. That hasn't changed the line height at all. | | And obviously those combinations don't exist in any actual | writing system. It's a (funny) abuse of the Unicode design, | not the intention of the design. | perihelions wrote: | That vertical-stacking combining pattern is similar to | how Tibetan script actually works (on a smaller scale): | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_script?useskin=vect | or#... | bsza wrote: | You did write "break the basic conceptions of", not | "change". To me, a line overlapping with _the previous | two lines_ seems to do exactly that. | | Also, the original suggestion was for Unicode to add | ornamental combining characters. I don't see how that | would require any breaking change. You can already stack | them vertically and horizontally. | doubloon wrote: | only the first three render properly in firefox / linux | yorwba wrote: | Only the first three are covered by at least one of the fonts | on your system. If you want the rest to render, install more | fonts. | | My Firefox on my Linux uses DejaVu Sans for the first three, | Noto Sans Palmyrene for the next two, Noto Sans Manichaean for | the one after that and Noto Sans Symbols 2 for the rest. | | Most popular Linux distros have one or two packages bundling | all Noto fonts. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-10-07 23:00 UTC)