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Unique Esperanto Symbols and Unicode

by eojeff, April 12, 2012

Messages: 5

Language: English

eojeff (User's profile) April 12, 2012, 6:21:10 PM

Hello,

I know that before WWI some within the Esperanto movement advocated a universal currency called the Spesmilo. This currency had its own symbol, a superimposed Sm.

This got me thinking about Esperanto, Unicode support, and typeface rendering.
  • Do Stelo or Mono have their own symbols?
  • Are there any non-alphabetic symbols present in current or historical Esperanto literature that are not currently supported by Unicode?
I know the green five-pointed star has been a symbol of the Esperanto movement since Zamenhof's day. Unicode already has a five-pointed star glyph, so that appears to be covered.

Any thoughts?

tommjames (User's profile) April 12, 2012, 8:56:28 PM

I don't know about Stelo or Mono, but the Spesmilo has a code point in Unicode.

I doubt many fonts will support it though.

eojeff (User's profile) April 13, 2012, 2:46:17 AM

You're right, not many fonts support the Spesmilo symbol. However, it has been part of Unicode since 5.2 (2009). I've put in a feature request to have support added to the Linux Libertine font. I don't have the requisite background in producing vector graphics, or I'd submit a patch myself.

opalo (User's profile) April 13, 2012, 4:47:30 AM

eojeff:
  • Do Stelo or Mono have their own symbols?
  • Are there any non-alphabetic symbols present in current or historical Esperanto literature that are not currently supported by Unicode?
I believe the answer to both questions is no. The Unicode people seem to have been very thorough and in the 1900s the fuss over the "hats" would have ever after discouraged any such new symbols; in fact I'm surprised that they ventured to create the spesmilo symbol.

Maybe you could ask them to pick a codepoint for a little portrait of Zamenhof? It could be called LA MAJSTRO.

erinja (User's profile) April 14, 2012, 1:05:18 AM

It's a highly theoretical point, really.

I've only ever seen the Spesmilo symbol in the Wikipedia article itself. No one in Esperanto uses these currency units, so it's not a needed symbol. To me, whoever put the spesmilo symbol into a Unicode code set was doing out of personal love of font creation, because they certainly didn't do it because the symbol was useful or needed.

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