Re: [DejaVu-fonts] Re: decimal points & the -negative sign

[Ben L. <ben...@gm...>]

On Wednesday 26 April 2006 20:38, C. Tiffany wrote:
>   Anyway, thank-you, and please look into improving the -negative sign;
>   the -negative sign is also too easy to miss in many fonts,
>   and is roughly as important as the decimal point, &
>   probably easier to fix.

Which one do you mean as the negative sign? The minus sign is at U+2212 ("=
=E2=88=92"),=20
which has the same width as "+". I think you're talking about the U+002D=20
("-"), which is the one on your keyboard. The second one is called=20
hyphen-minus in unicode, meaning it is also used as hypen. This double use=
=20
has restrictions to it's size: hyphen can't be as wide as the minus sign, o=
r=20
it would become almost unusable as hyphen and makes words with hyphens in i=
t=20
much harder to read. We have some nice words in Dutch like=20
"spring-in-'t-veld" that aren't readible as "spring=E2=88=92in=E2=88=92't=
=E2=88=92veld" in Sans or=20
Serif. It may be a little (with little I mean 1 pixel) wider than how it is=
=20
now, but certainly not as wide as the plus sign.

Anytime your using numbers, you sould use the first one. From=20
http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr25/tr25-7.html :

[quote]
Minus sign. U+2212 minus sign is the preferred representation of the unary =
and=20
binary minus sign rather than the ASCII-derived U+002D hyphen-minus, becaus=
e=20
U+2212 is unambiguous and because it is rendered with a more desirable=20
length, usually longer than a hyphen.=20
[/quote]

but off course, applications have to support the sign too, and since it's n=
ot=20
on our keyboards, we'll probably use the hyphen-minus glyph as minus for ma=
ny=20
many years.

Ben