googlefonts
Update currencies in GF Latin Plus
This is a followup to pull request #145 that was automatically closed by mistake when this project renamed its "master" branch to "main".
Be sure to also read all the comments posted in the original PR (#145)
Original PR description as submitted on Jul 11, 2019 by @thundernixon:
@LisaHuang2017 and I compiled a table to look at currency symbols in the latin-ext_unique-glyphs.nam encoding.
We found compelling evidence to remove several symbols shouldn't be require in the GF Latin Plus character set. Namely, each of these currencies has long since been replaced by the Euro.
- ₤, Italian Lira (replaced by Euro in Italic, San Marino, and the Vatican since 2002)
- ₧, Spanish Peseta (replaced by Euro in Spain and Andorra since 2002)
- ₣, French Franc (replaced by Euro since 1999/2002)
Additionally, we found evidence suggesting that several currencies be added to the Latin Plus set:
- ₨, rupee, in use by approx. 262M+ people in Mauritius, Nepal, Pakistan, Seychelles, Sri Lanka
- ฿, baht, in use by approx. 68M people in Thailand
- ₸, tenge, in use by approx. 18M people in Kazakhstan (which has officially switched to a Latin-based script)
I haven't added currency symbols with fewer than 50M users in countries which have a different primary script than Latin. However, we may wish to adjust the rubric to include some or all of these:
- ₴, hryvnia, used by 42M+ people in Ukraine
- ₪, new sheqel, used by 9M in Israel
- ₭, kip, used by 6M in Laos
- ₮, tugrik, used by 3M in Mongolia
- ₾, lari, used by 3M in Georgia
Also, a wildcard that we may wish to include:
- ₿, Bitcoin, used by a hard-to-estimate number of people, but maybe 35M+ and growing
Potentially, symbols from the latter categories could be included in the "Optional additions," or in "GF Latin Pro."
Also notable is the lack of the ƒ, florin (Unicode 0192), from any of the GF encodings. It is no longer used in the Netherlands, but it is used by 300,000 people in Aruba, Curaçao, and the Dutch half of Sint Maarten, as well as in photography (to denote aperture). This might be another good symbol for GF Latin Pro.
| Unicode | Symbol | Name | Currently in use | Countries in use | Approx. Pop. | Main Script | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Latin Core | |||||||
| 0024 | $ | dollar | yes | US, UK, … | 400M+ (7B?) | Latin | |
| 00A2 | ¢ | cent | yes | US, UK, Mexico | 400M+ | Latin | |
| 20AC | € | Euro | yes | European Union | 508M+ | Latin | |
| 00A3 | £ | sterling / pound | yes | UK, British territories | 66M+ | Latin | |
| 00A5 | ¥ | yen | yes | Japan, China (PRC) | 127M+, 1.386B+ | Japanese, Chinese | |
| 00A4 | ¤ | currency | yes | generic sign | ? | ||
| latin-ext | |||||||
| 20B9 | ₹ | rupeeIndian | yes | India | 1,325M+ | Devanagari, Latin | |
| 20A8 | ₨ | rupee | yes | Mauritius, Nepal, Pakistan, Seychelles, Sri Lanka | 262M+ | mix Latin and local scripts | |
| 20A6 | ₦ | naira | yes | Nigeria | 191M | Latin | |
| 20BD | ₽ | ruble | yes | Russia | 146M | Cyrillic | |
| 20B1 | ₱ | peso | yes | Philippines | 101M+ | Latin | |
| 20AB | ₫ | dong | yes | Vietnam | 94M | Latin | |
| 20BA | ₺ | liraTurkish | yes | Turkey | 83M | Latin | |
| 20A9 | ₩ | won | yes | South and North Korea | 51M + 25M | Hangul | |
| 0E3F | ฿ | baht | yes | Thailand | 68M | Thai | |
| 20B4 | ₴ | hryvnia | yes | Ukraine | 42M+ | Cyrillic | |
| 20BF | ₿ | bitcoin | yes | World Wide Web | Hard to say. Maybe something between 25M & 35M users. Important for the internet, though. | Latin | |
| 20B5 | ₵ | cedi | yes | Ghana | 28M | Latin | |
| 20B8 | ₸ | tenge | yes | Kazakhstan | 18M | Kazakh Latin + Cyrillic | |
| 20BC | ₼ | manat | yes | Azerbaijan | 10M | Latin | |
| 20AA | ₪ | new sheqel | yes | State of Israel | 9M | Hebrew | |
| 20B2 | ₲ | guarani | yes | Paraguay | 7M+ | Latin | |
| 20AD | ₭ | kip | yes | Laos | 6M | Lao | |
| 20A1 | ₡ | colon monetary | yes | Costa Rica | 5M | Latin | |
| 20AE | ₮ | tugrik (or tögrög) | yes | Mongolia | 3M | Mongolian | |
| 20BE | ₾ | lari | yes | Georgia | 3M+ | Georgian | |
| 20A0 | ₠ | euro-currency | yes (?) | European Union | ? | ||
| 20A2 | ₢ | cruzeiro | no | Brazil | 0 | ||
| 20A3 | ₣ | franc | no | France | 0 | Replaced in 1999 by Euro. “the symbol ₣ was suggested in France by Prime Minister Édouard Balladur, but it was never used” (Wikipedia) |
|
| 20A4 | ₤ | lira | no | Italy | 0 | ||
| 20A5 | ₥ | mill | no (or ‘sometimes’) | US, UK, Malta… | |||
| 20A7 | ₧ | peseta | no | Spain | 0 | ||
| 20AF | ₯ | drachma | no | Greece | 0 | Greek | |
| 20B0 | ₰ | pfennig or german penny | no | Germany | 0 | Latin | |
| 20B3 | ₳ | austral | no | Argentina | 0 | Latin | |
| 20B6 | ₶ | livre tournois | no | France | 0 | Latin | |
| 20B7 | ₷ | spesmilo | no | UK, Switzerland | 0 | Latin | |
| 20BB | ₻ | mark | no | Germany, Scotland | 0 | Latin | |
| Not in current GF charsets | |||||||
| 0192 | ƒ | florin | yes | Aruba, Curaçao, and the Dutch half of Sint Maarten and in photography (aperture) | 310K | Latin | https://typedrawers.com/discussion/349/florin-sign-f |
Be sure to also read all the comments posted in the original PR (#145)
since I merged #453, we will now need to migrate this PR to https://github.com/googlefonts/glyphsets/
We updated the glyphsets and the currency in the glyphsets subtree, so closing here.
