I have never seen anyone use it as part of an up arrow spread across two lines in the way that you’re suggesting. So I don’t really understand your point.
Ok it’s not symmetrical, but I don’t buy your argument that it _should_ be (or that it’s a reasonable complaint to make about a font).
You've never heard of "caret and stick"?
I do hate this asymmetry when I'm trying to do an ASCII flowchart of some sort.
But I'd also like to add that calling it an unreasonable complaint sounds a little hysterical. It's just a complaint. It's also a clear one, and of obvious use.
Are there any programming languages that use vertical arrows? Do they appear on one line or two?
Befunge (1993; many later languages were inspired by it) uses just the ASCII arrowheads. The arrow tail is more likely to exist in doc comments.
You could maybe try U+2303 (⌃) for the up arrowhead, but why not just use U+2191 (↑) for the standard arrow?
The crossbar height of lowercase letters is not a common typographical reference point...
beside if i may say so in my defense, the comparison is a bit unfair as a V (a full letter) is being compared to a caret (almost a superscript symbol). i have broken many typographical conventions but it won't make sense to break programmatic convention of the caret operator just for the alignment of the vertical arrows.
I don't know why the elevated position of the caret is sacred, other than to use as an accent mark. It could cause confusion with the ∧ (AND).
By your logic, the lowercase "v" should extend even higher to meet the pipe. The caret has conventionally been higher for a long time, and IMO would look out of place making it the inverse "v".
If you want arrows, just use U+2191 and U+2193.
The origins don’t really matter at this point. That’s what the character looks like and it’s what everyone expects.
Your use case is extremely niche. Making a font choice for that specific double-line situation would alienate everyone else who just wants the ^ to look like a ^.
Like others suggested, just use the Unicode arrows if you want arrows. Let the ^ be a classic ^.
It’s really disappointing when I find a new font that seems interesting until I encounter one weird design choice that makes it surprising to read. Fonts should be boring, typical, and follow what your brain expects to see, not trying to erase decades of typography norms and start something new for one common character.
So you're ok with permanent confusion of 0 vs O because "boring/expected" doesn't add a dot for zero?
> erase decades of typography norms and
This is not (such) a (n absolute) thing, there are different contradictory norms that persist for decades, just like in and artistic (though not only) field, so at a practical level this offers no guidance for any specific decision, you'd have to actually consider it in that specific case to see whether it makes sense
0 and O are not actually confusing in any of the fonts I use. As I’m typing this comment without any custom font changes, the 0 has a slash through it. In other fonts I use there’s an option to add a dot. These are all normal and common.
Redrawing the ^ character to not be elevated would be unexpected.
> This is not (such) a (n absolute) thing, there are different contradictory norms that persist for decades,
Fonts are expected to show common characters as those character, not something different to satisfy a singular edge case at the expense of every common use case.
If someone wants vertical arrows they should use Unicode vertical arrows, not try to force everyone looking for a ^ character to see something unusual.
But we're not talking about you, are we? You made a very general point, so look around... generally
> These are all normal and common.
Again, look around at most popular fonts in this wor(l)d, see how few of them have it. It's only "normal and common" in a small niche of code fonts. At most popular fonts would differentiate width, but that is a far legibility cry from the "exicting" innovation of using a dot. But that would be a surprising experience to most of the users because it's a rare occurence, so breaks your "be boring" maxim.
> Fonts are expected to show common characters as those character
In the case of 0 "as those characters" means an empty oval, so adding a dot/cross is "something differnt to satisfy a singular edge case" of basic legibility at the expense of "every common use case" of confused ovals between 0oO
Also, I finally looked into more details of the ^ and even more confused by your comments: one of the most popular fonts - Verdana - has ^ exactly like described by the OP - top reaching the top of U and bottom reaching the horizontal line in e. Similar with Arial, ony it raises higher than U Same in a popular code font Source Code Pro
So all your "don't mess with expectactions" is made up, they do not exist because that symbol is already popularly different, so there is no expectation that it's a tiny hat!!!
The comment above requesting that ^ be turned into something unexpected would have been a negative, but thankfully it’s not a feature of the font.
It allows comments to indicate the thing they're talking about ↑
Or logical → implications
The bottom of the independent caret should be lower, roughly symmetrical to the letter `v` (this is not traditionally a goal). The top should still reach the height of a capital letter, but the bottom should descend into the lowercase letter area - for many fonts, perhaps to the level of the horizontal part of a lowercase `e` (is there a typographical term for this?)? For fonts where the x-height is half of the cap-height, there might be no overlap with the lowercase letter, though it still doesn't need to worry about leaving space.
The bottom of the caret is, however, higher than the mathematical "and" sign ∧, which rests on the baseline (and usually does not reach full height) or the Greek capital lambda `Λ` which is full height.