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in reply to {J} Re: Dingbats in node titles: What's your opinion
in thread Dingbats in node titles: What's your opinion

Is your discontent rooted in the actual character being used? Because in my opinion, the use of the bullet is to convey the exact same information as "(merlyn)" would, in far less space, and in a far more identifiable way.

Aside from the issue of HTML entity (non) portability, there are a limited number of HTML entities (or single letters) to go around. When those are gone, people would have to start using combinations. Ugh! Plus people then have to remember that • means merlyn, or {J} means "japhy". Better in this case to use a name.

I prefer to save space by using neither scheme, but I have no objection (other than space) to people using their login names. I used the name scheme in the past, and found that it didn't fit for me.

  • Comment on Re: {J} Re: Dingbats in node titles: What's your opinion

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Ø Re: Re: {J} Re: Dingbats in node titles: What's your opinion
by ignatz (Vicar) on Feb 28, 2002 at 00:52 UTC
    Don't forget unicode characters.
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    ()-()                                                      ()-()
     \"/    DON'T   BLAME   ME,   I  VOTED   FOR    PACO!       \"/
      `                                                          ` 
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    
      Don't forget unicode characters.

      I trust you're joking, and that you've seen how unicode characters render if you don't have the right unicode font installed.

      ISO-8859-1 (Latin1) is a safe subset.

        Not at all. You said that there were a limited number of entities which isn't the case when you add in unicode. Seriously, it's time that sites start pushing the envelope concerning the US English centric view that is the web. In some ways I feel like the web is the stone age. Hell, Gutenberg had more flexibility than we do with basic ASCII.