Writing Systems
January 16, 2019 9:56 AM   Subscribe

This web site presents one glyph for each of the world’s writing systems. It is the first step of the Missing Scripts Project, a long-term initiative that aims to identify writing systems which are not yet encoded in the Unicode standard. As of today, there are still 146 scripts not yet encoded in Unicode.
posted by zamboni (10 comments total) 30 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is great. Both a really nice resource, and very attractively designed.
posted by biogeo at 10:43 AM on January 16, 2019


Ahhh this is lovely!!
posted by Hermione Granger at 11:04 AM on January 16, 2019


I find it mildly amusing that this site causes Chrome to pop up its "would you like to translate this page" dialogue.
posted by penguinicity at 12:02 PM on January 16, 2019 [2 favorites]


I find it mildly amusing that this site causes Chrome to pop up its "would you like to translate this page" dialogue.

I think that's a consequence of the metadata on the page, rather than the content.

From the source:
<html lang="de">
<head>
	<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EDGE; chrome=1"/>
	<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">
	<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
	<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no">
	<meta name="language" content="de">
	<meta name="author" content="wysiwyg* Software Design GmbH">
Chrome is being explicitly told that the webpage is in German, hence the translation popup.
posted by zamboni at 12:18 PM on January 16, 2019


Proto-cuneiform looks so happy!
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 1:07 PM on January 16, 2019


Also: it amuses me that “shell script” has another meaning.
posted by acb at 2:22 PM on January 16, 2019 [2 favorites]


Tangentially in Unicode news, the Unicode Committee has approved a whole bunch of graphic characters from old computers and terminals, including Teletext block-drawing symbols and symbols from Commodore PETSCII, Sinclair, Amstrad, MSX, and other machines of that era.

Alas, one symbol noted as omitted was the quadripartite Dobbshead in the Atari ST's character set, on the basis that it's IP encumbered.
posted by acb at 2:25 PM on January 16, 2019 [2 favorites]


Hey I bet the Church of the Subgenius would like to get the Unicode Committee to pay for the icon $$ PRAISE BOB $$
posted by symbioid at 2:45 PM on January 16, 2019


IIRC, the Dobbshead is a trademark, and they did sue some Canadian guy who claimed to be “Bob” for using it in the 90s.
posted by acb at 3:11 PM on January 16, 2019


I wish each glyph was a link to all/most of the glyphs of that particular writing system.
posted by anadem at 9:19 PM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


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