I have an idea for a useful Unicode script.
It consists of a single character, but will have a number of "accents" or "combining characters".
MANUS SYMBOL
MANUS COMBINING CHIRALITY DEXTER
MANUS COMBINING CHIRALITY SINISTER
MANUS COMBINING FACING PALMAR
MANUS COMBINING FACING DORSAL
MANUS COMBINING DIGIT THUMB
MANUS COMBINING DIGIT INDEX
MANUS COMBINING DIGIT INSULT
MANUS COMBINING DIGIT RING
MANUS COMBINING DIGIT SMALL
For each of the chirality and facing types of combining character, exactly one must be specified. For the digit type of combining combining, zero to five may be specified.
It would take 128 glyphs to display this font, less if the font system can handle reflections or even better, algorithmically generate the glyphs.
What this font represents should be obvious.
2010-06-28
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perhaps I'm not completely clear on the glyphs concept - i thought a glyph corresponded to a single "letter" symbol. Here it seems that if I would be allowed to freely combine the fingers of a hand, I would need at least (5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1) plus 1 (for no fingers) = 121 for the MANUS COMBINING DIGIT thingies, times 2 for PALMAR/DORSAL, times 2 for DEXTER/SINISTER = 484...
ReplyDeleteWhat am I missing?
The five digits can be set independently of each other, so that's 2^5 or 32. Times two for PALMAR/DORSAL, times two for DEXTER/SINISTER, which is 128
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