L2/10-289 Title: How to Pick a Representative Glyph for a New Currency Symbol Authors: Ken Whistler, Asmus Freytag Date: August 4, 2010 Action: For consideration by the UTC The adoption of the Euro in 2002 has set two precedents. One is the idea that a currency needs to a have a logo to get respect. The other is that governments sanction an official design. In case of the Euro, it was initially not understood by all stakeholders that the most natural representation of the new symbol was not like a logo, with all details frozen, but as a character, with glyphic variations to harmonize with the font used to render the character. The latter view became the accepted one, and now there exist as many different glyphs for the Euro as there are distinct font designs containing it. That, in turn, raised the question of which of these glyphs would be the most appropriate to use as representative glyph in the Unicode code charts. That question was eventually solved (see more below), but the purpose of this document is to question whether the solution found for the Euro is the always the most appropriate for any new currency symbol, no matter the circumstances. To be able to discuss this, a bit of background is needed first. The primary and most common use for any currency symbol is to note prices for local consumption (labels and price lists in the local language). Therefore, in our opinion any new currency symbol is foremost intended to harmonize with type faces native to the area using the currency. In consequence, because of that, we are not convinced by the statement in WG2 document N3862 that harmonizing the design of the sample glyph of a new currency sign with those of *other* currency symbols is of great practical importance. Further, the analogy to the Euro isn't as straightforward as it is sometimes claimed. Creating a harmonized design for the dollar sign, pound and Euro sign did make some sense, because all of them are used primarily with the Latin script. As a happy coincidence, the code charts for these characters show glyphs that actually occur in their area of use - to the degree a Times-style font is used to display prices. The same may not necessarily be true of currency symbols that are not primarily intended for use with the Latin script. For example U+20AA NEW SHEKEL SIGN is intended to be used in a Hebrew script context. Therefore, it makes sense for the sample glyph to harmonize with the font used to display the Hebrew script in Unicode. Fonts for depicting scripts other than Latin, Greek and Cyrillic in the code charts are not based on Times, but are chosen independently as native fonts that are similar in spirit to Times. They are everyday designs with as few idiosyncratic or "novel" elements as possible and usually selected to show good distinction between different characters. In the case of the proposed new Indian Rupee Sign, the symbol will be used primarily in the domestic context of India. Therefore, it will occur most of the time in the typographical context of one of the Indian scripts. Even though the symbol isn't meant to be strictly specific to any single script, its design took Devanagari as one point of departure. Therefore, it would appear that the sample glyph in the code chart benefits less from harmonizing with Times, than from being related to whatever font style the charts use for Devanagari in the code charts. Doing it that way would again allow the code charts to show a glyph that might actually occur in its intended area of use. While it seems that the Indian government is cognizant of the possibility of the new Indian Rupee Sign also being used outside of India (say with the Latin script), such use would always be considered a minority usage, and would occur alongside of the use with other, non-Indian and non-Latin scripts (Han, Kana, etc.). As a result, recognizing the non-Latin nature of the new Rupee symbol by choice of the sample glyph in the code charts would be the most appropriate way to handle this block of cross-cultural symbols. On the contrary, sticking to an unanalyzed precept of "it must be Times" would be tantamount to European parochialism in an internationally used standard. Because there have been competing opinions on how to apply the existing precedent as to what typestyle to use, an annotation at the head of the Currency Symbols block could make clear that symbols not natively used with the Latin script are not shown in the way they might appear in a Times type face, but instead in the way they might appear in a sample type face similar to the one used for the dominant script(s) for the intended usage area of the new symbol.