Glyph Browser: Consolidate Greek, Mathematical Signs, etc.

[A_B_C]

Hi there,

this is a usability suggestion regarding the Glyph Browser. I think it is pretty unfortunate that you adhere to categorising glyphs by Unicode Blocks rather than by script families or similar conceptual schemes that make more sense. Take Polytonic Greek, for instance. If somebody wants to enter a word like

• ὀξύμωρος

using the Glyph Browser, he or she will have to switch Unicode Blocks twice (at least, if you want to “type” the word continuously). See my video. For the occasional entering of Polytonic Greek through the Glyph Browser, this is a nuisance. Indesign has a much better solution. When you select Greek from the Glyph Browser categories menu, you will be presented a consolidated section of all Greek Unicode Blocks, i.e. Greek and Coptic and Greek Extended. With fonts such as the Brill typeface that are intended for philological work, even Ancient Greek Numbers (uni10140 – uni1018F) and similar are consolidated into the Greek category. It is rather odd or not to have all Greek glyphs consolidated together. Remember, the overall structure of Unicode isn’t overly logical from a usability point of view. Some say it’s a historically grown mess. 

And the same goes for mathematical signs etc. etc. … please make sure that all these are logically grouped together. And don’t be afraid to copy a solution that is obviously better. If you can come up with a still better solution, that’s even better. But the current categorisation isn’t really useful.

Thanks for considering,

Alex 

 

[Fixx]

Finding and entering glyphs from Glyph browser can be cumbersome. For example why multiplication sign is not a mathematical operator?

[walt.farrell]

5 hours ago, Fixx said:

Finding and entering glyphs from Glyph browser can be cumbersome. For example why multiplication sign is not a mathematical operator?

Because the multiplication symbol existed before Unicode, and is part of an older set of characters in the older iso-8859-1 encoding. And because Serif chose to use the character layout chosen by the Unicode Consortium, who restricted the "Mathematical Operators" section of the layout to those symbols that weren't already defined someplace else in the encoding scheme.

 

[A_B_C]

Yes, that’s precisely the explanation for it. And a pretty accurate problem description at the same time.