Libertinus: U+2052 Commercial Minus Sign

[iandoug]

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

[alerque]

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

[Crissov]

For the record: Google Fonts Glyph Sets

[iandoug]

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.

[kimmus]

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 ‘./.’ .

[iandoug]

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]

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.

[KrasnayaPloshchad]

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

[iandoug]

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