I can buy that the name in unicode should be something other than "external link". It could be something more generic like "external reference". Boom, now it can be accepted because it's not tied to <a>.

The problem with the rejection is that "that last bit of differently-formatted text is an active element in this application, leading to an outside resource" is that it's kind of a strawman: why be so specific just to reject it because you've decided to be so specific?

Though all of that justification is kind of unnecessary. Really, I just find it ridiculous that the unicode group is going to suddenly become prude about a ubiquitous symbol yet have 20 different check mark symbols. Sure, if everyone made the "but there are 20 different check mark symbols so why can't I have <pet symbol>?" argument, unicode would be even more ridiculous. And that's an argument to reject <pet symbol>, not one of the most ubiquitous symbols on the internet.

"Unicode has a bunch of stupid symbols, so it should at least add the most useful symbols that we use on the internet" really is a good argument.

* It has APL symbols (checking the Wiki article on APL syntax and the APL standard, it seems that APL programs can be represented entirely in Unicode - which makes sense, but is still a little surprising).

* There's a benzene code point: ⌬

* "ERASE TO THE LEFT", better known as backspace, is a thing: ⌫

...and a little more bizarro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscellaneous_Technical

If the "external link" symbol had occurred in some legacy character set, then it would have been included automatically.

But since it is a new proposal, it will be validated according to Unicodes policy for new symbols.

That's simple. The justification for most characters, including the exemplary one you mentioned, is that they were already encoded in some other repertoire. The consortium's task is to collect and unify them.

To actually get the character included, you can't just reason that it might be used in a certain way, you will have to demonstrate it with actual and authentic use in the wild. The accepted proposal for the inclusion of the power symbol is a nice example of how this works.

If you can find a bunch of printed manuals or books or websites that actually use this icon in this manner you might be able to submit a successful proposal.

I mean, you might want to say "External links can be identified by their □ marker" or "The Windows key is marked □ and can be found to the left of the space bar"

Here's some random characters from the "Math Symbols" page of OSX's character viewer.

⨐⨔⊹⊰⨶⨹⩫⫸⧯⧼

Did you know that Unicode has an entire set of dominos in it?

🀱🀲🀳🀴🀵🀶🀷🀸🀹🀺🀻🀼🀽🀾🀿🁀🁁🁂🁃🁄🁅🁆🁇🁈🁉🁊🁋🁌🁍🁎🁏🁐🁑🁒🁓🁔🁕🁖🁗🁘🁙🁚🁛🁜🁝🁞🁟🁠🁡

Twice: once horizontally, once vertically.

🁣🁤🁥🁦🁧🁨🁩🁪🁫🁬🁭🁮🁰🁱🁲🁳🁴🁵🁶🁷🁸🁹🁺🁻🁼🁽🁾🁿🂀🂁🂂🂃🂄🂅🂆🂇🂈🂉🂊🂋🂌🂍🂎🂏🂐🂑🂒🂓

I know I sure use Ogham runes in my daily text communications on a constant basis.

ᚃᚄᚓᚈᚚᚙ᚛ᚘ

And Egyptian hieroglyphs.

𓁑𓀳𓂩𓃋𓇀𓈣𓇻𓇼𓇽𓀫

Oh hey and here's a "next page" and "previous page" symbol that "external link" could comfortably sit next to.

⎘⎗

And some miscellaneous arrows.

⤥↪︎↴↶↺⥀⟳⤩⤭⤱⥹⥰⥼⥺⥽⥬⇆⇼⇟⥣↬⇴

If your browser feels like displaying Wingdings codepoints, something like this: http://egypt.urnash.com 

But the question is not if the icon is practical or silly, the question is if it makes sense as a Unicode character or should be handled at some other level like a GUI control or widget.

Should GUI icons, widgets and controls be covered by Unicode? That is a can of worms.

I understand the usefulness of the "external link" icon, but should it really be something you arbitrarily type into a text? Shouldn't it be part of the rendering of a link?

The reason: Softbank and Docomo both used proprietary emoji sets, widely used in Japan for text messages. Not including these in Unicode would have resulted in a choice: be compatible with the rest of the world, or keep using the emojis that became part of their culture. Not satisfactory. So basically, they had to put emoji in Unicode for the Japanese to use it, and excluding Japan is not really an option if you want a universal standard.

It did open an Pandora box though.

The encoding of emoji was in order to unify Softbank/docomo/au under one set so that iPhones/Androids sold by the different carriers could send emoji among each other without relying on email translators (as had been the technical solution with feature phones until then)

And a great idea to put them outside the 16-bit plane, so platforms would be forced to support characters beyond the BMP because of the public demand for emojis.

But I think going forward, emojis should be handled outside of Unicode. They are really small illustrations rather than characters or symbols.

They already got all the Wingdings symbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingdings

The obvious hack is to make a custom character set called “Rejected by Unicode”.

You still see this kind of mischief when Outlook users type a smiley, and it is rendered as a "J" with the wingdings font. Readers of the mail where styling is stripped or who haven't the font installed just sees a confusing "J".

I accept that heuristic, and find myself agreeing with it for the purposes of the external link character. Let me try to convince you:

This is a real conversation:

A> Are you familiar with Homebrew? You can get it from brew.sh.

B> Ok. Where is brew.sh?

If we were not limited by plain text, we could use colour and underlining to distinguish that as a domain name. A lot of websites find this poor for accessibility reasons so they use the link character.

Another way to think about this is to imagine the link-character is pronounced "https://" as in:

* Are you familiar with Homebrew? You can get it from https://brew.sh.

* Are you familiar with Homebrew? You can get it from {link character} brew.sh.

Isn't that plain text? I'm not sure how to pronounce it, but there's a lot of emoji I don't know how to pronounce. Do you think this is important?

So if you get that far, how much further is this really?

* Are you familiar with Homebrew? You can get it from brew.sh {link character}.

<sarcasm>Oh yeah, that's right</sarcasm>

That's a contingent answer. If you, say, set out to try to convince the world to use it that way, and created that demand, then by golly, that demand would exist at that point and the answer could change. But hypothesizing some possible text message that could use it isn't strong enough to argue for inclusion in the standard because every possible proposal passes that test.

Phones already do it for .com, .gov, etc, but our cutesy .sh, .dev, .rocks, .xyz, etc will take a bit to catch up.

Negative. My renderer is a piece of paper.

The request is for a code point to represent the visible external link character, not for an invisible control-code to decorate some structured data (which cannot "appear" on paper).

(The hsts preload list helps a bit with this, but only for domains registered with it.)

Which also lack a decent Unicode symbol despite being a word used in plain text. ️

That's certainly a useful sniff test, and I think you've made a good case with it. I wonder, though, whether one should also consider a "documentation sniff test", asking: would it make sense to type that symbol into some documentation one is writing about how to use, for example, some software? I think the answer to that question is a clear yes: it might make sense to put this symbol onto such a page, and although being on inert paper (it wouldn't also be an active element) it would certainly be a useful symbol in that hypothetical text.

One of them, BROKEN CIRCLE WITH NORTHWEST ARROW, could actually be used for the external link symbol if it were mirrored!

Or, to put it another way: if you think it needs to point to the right, is that because the text you read flows that way?

This then makes me wonder if the large portion of the world's population that read right-to-left find the currently widely-used external link symbol (as discussed in the article) a bit jarring.

The symbol appears mirrored in RTL languages on Wikipedia, e.g. this random Arabic article: https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%83%D8%B3%D9%86...

Come to think of it, are tabs aligned toward the right side when the browser/OS is set to an RTL language?

Modern SMS readers will linkify the URL, but will set the visible text equal to the URL, so again it wouldn't benefit from the symbol.

This explanation mirrors the rejection rationale: you don't need a symbol to be a Unicode character if the document is already rich text; the symbol can be an image instead. If you have anchor tags, you probably also have image tags or CSS.

No, that's not the rejection rationale. The rejection rationale isn't about having access to image tags or CSS. It's about hypertext (click link, go to another text) vs having text (can't click link, no other text). If that was the rationale, they wouldn't allow emojis in unicode, because you could insert them as images.

Emoji are useful (arguably I guess) in plain text scenarios because they exist to convey additional information about an author's emotion, and that author might use plain text. The external link symbol is not useful in plain text scenarios because it exists to convey additional information about an author's preceeding hypertext, and that author isn't using hypertext.

[1] https://emojipedia.org/white-right-pointing-index/

[2] https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/t60AAOSwAPVZDOK3/s-l300.jpg

I would propose updating this SMS sniff test to a Wikipedia sniff test.

I explicitly don't want it to be "Wikipedia sniff test", because that's equivalent to a "Webpage sniff test", which is equivalent to "anything goes", because icon fonts exist now and are used.

That said, other comments made me realize that Unicode is better described as "whatever was there in all the codepages around the world at the time of bootstrapping the Unicode standard" plus what's typically used in a written language, plus SMS sniff test.

„Plz send me the <LINK SYMBOL>.

<RAISED HAND WITH PART BETWEEN MIDDLE AND RING FINGERS><EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-4>“

https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f517/index.ht...

Can't paste it on HN, as the Unicode/Emoji filter seems to be removing it.

But for a text mode interface that does have full blown anchor tags -- not very mainstream -- you have a point.