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Posted by Jukka K. Korpela on 07/08/06 12:18
Alan J. Flavell <flavell@physics.gla.ac.uk> scripsit:
>>> Yes. Ⓜ = Ⓜ
>>
>> No. That is merely a capital M within a circle.
>
> That's what I understood the original question to be asking for:
>
>>> There is a symbol used in Paris for the Metro system,
>>> which is a capital M inside a circle.
What the question asked for is somewhat unclear, but to me it seems that the
intent was to find a character that could be used as a logo-like symbol,
denoting the (Paris) Metro in a manner that makes the meaning obvious to
anyone who is familiar with Paris Metro. In that sense, I don't think
U+24C2 CIRCLED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M is the right answer. Or I could say:
if it is the answer, I would like to know what the question really was. How
would the symbol be used, and in which context?
You could try to make U+24C2 look more like the Metro symbol by setting its
color, but the real question is why you would present it as a character in
the first place. Characters are meant to be used in _texts_ whereas logos
and icons have use of their own as independent symbols, though possibly used
in conjunction with other symbols or texts.
On the practical side, if you use U+24C2 (no matter how you enter it in an
HTML document), then it will probably be seen correctly only by users who
have Microsoft Office installed so that they have Arial Unicode MS and by a
small number of users who have installed Code2000 or some of the rare fonts
that support this character, see
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/24c2/fontsupport.htm
Besides, people using IE would not see the character right even if they have
Arial Unicode MS, unless the browser has been set to use that font by
default (not a common or generally advisable choice by a user) or your
document explicitly suggests that font.
For completeness, I mention that an encircled "M" could also be written in
Unicode as letter "M" followed by U+20DD COMBINING ENCLOSING CIRCLE, but
this would be an even more problematic approach in practice.
The practical way is to present the symbol for Metro as an image. The alt
text depends, as usual, on the context and purpose, but it would typically
be alt="metro".
>> It is _not_ the logo for the Paris Metro.
>
> Right. If it *was* specifically their logo, then you probably
> wouldn't be allowed to use it without their permission.
In that case, the symbol most probably would not have been included into
Unicode. Regarding intellectual property issues, fair use exemptions or
corresponding rules probably allow people to use the logo when they use it
honestly and with a good reason. Again, the specific intended use is unknown
here.
--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
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