Comment by teddyh
3 years ago
"Hyphen‐minus" is an ASCII abomination, and should only be used in ASCII‐constrained environments. Hyphen is hyphen and minus is minus:
‐ 002010;HYPHEN;Pd;0;ON;;;;;N;;;;;
− 002212;MINUS SIGN;Sm;0;ES;;;;;N;;;;;
3 years ago
"Hyphen‐minus" is an ASCII abomination, and should only be used in ASCII‐constrained environments. Hyphen is hyphen and minus is minus:
‐ 002010;HYPHEN;Pd;0;ON;;;;;N;;;;;
− 002212;MINUS SIGN;Sm;0;ES;;;;;N;;;;;
The issue of non-ASCII-constrained environments is that it's still not easily accessible on most keyboards.
I do know and use the compose key but it's not the same as having a standard key for it. Trying on a mobile device, long pressing the dash key there suggests 2 dashes (not sure if the second choice is en-dash or em-dash), which is some but that's not the 4 types discussed here.
If a character is too difficult to type on some specific system, that is indeed a constrained environment.
Do you know one where it's easy to type? There are many international keyboards but I don't think any has that many dashes. Compose key is the best I think.
1 reply →
I was wondering what's better. The document is clearer if we use unicode.
But maybe for humans it's easier if we have a limited character set and use context instead. Like this.
In plain text, - is a hyphen:
In math context - is a minus sign
Where it will be ensured to be rendered as appropriate
It’s easier to type HYPHEN-MINUS‐the‐keyboard-key, but text should be displayed using the appropriate glyph, depending on its semantic meaning, which is never HYPHEN-MINUS‐the-glyph.
(This discussion is similar to the classic net discussion about TAB‐the‐ASCII‐character versus TAB‐the‐keyboard‐key, with some people having trouble conceptualizing the difference.)