The Thai Baht (฿) has always been the most frequently used Bitcoin symbol right?

[Luke-Jr]

This is a bad idea, because the browser isn't guaranteed to copy the invisible TC.

Are you sure? The characters are "visible", but the font defines them to have zero width.

Is the "TC" supposed to actually be invisible? I see it as "B⃦TC"

[giszmo]

This is a bad idea, because the browser isn't guaranteed to copy the invisible TC.

Are you sure? The characters are "visible", but the font defines them to have zero width.

Is the "TC" supposed to actually be invisible? I see it as "B⃦TC"

Then there is something wrong with your system. Here on my standard Windows 7 64bit with 8GB RAM it displays just fine.

(Ok, seriously, are you talking about this: BTC? So either it should load the Webfont resulting in BTC being displayed as "B with decoration", "invisible T", "invisible C" or your w3c/lynx on a non-unicode console should just display BTC … or your smart browser decides that there is something wrong with letters that have zero width so it defaults to another font. Which browser are you using?)

[Luke-Jr]

This is a bad idea, because the browser isn't guaranteed to copy the invisible TC.

Are you sure? The characters are "visible", but the font defines them to have zero width.

Is the "TC" supposed to actually be invisible? I see it as "B⃦TC"

(Ok, seriously, are you talking about this: BTC? So either it should load the Webfont resulting in BTC being displayed as "B with decoration", "invisible T", "invisible C" or your w3c/lynx on a non-unicode console should just display BTC … or your smart browser decides that there is something wrong with letters that have zero width so it defaults to another font. Which browser are you using?)

"B⃦TC" is shown by Konqueror/KHTML, Rekonq, and QupZilla.
"B⃦" alone is shown by Chromium and Firefox.

[giszmo]

This is a bad idea, because the browser isn't guaranteed to copy the invisible TC.

Are you sure? The characters are "visible", but the font defines them to have zero width.

Is the "TC" supposed to actually be invisible? I see it as "B⃦TC"

(Ok, seriously, are you talking about this: BTC? So either it should load the Webfont resulting in BTC being displayed as "B with decoration", "invisible T", "invisible C" or your w3c/lynx on a non-unicode console should just display BTC … or your smart browser decides that there is something wrong with letters that have zero width so it defaults to another font. Which browser are you using?)

"B⃦TC" is shown by Konqueror/KHTML, Rekonq, and QupZilla.
"B⃦" alone is shown by Chromium and Firefox.

Konqueror displays ฿ and Ƀ right but I have the same problem with BTC. Interesting. For me, it's really narrowing down to either ฿ or Ƀ then.

[Atlas]

This is a bad idea, because the browser isn't guaranteed to copy the invisible TC.

Are you sure? The characters are "visible", but the font defines them to have zero width.

Is the "TC" supposed to actually be invisible? I see it as "B⃦TC"

(Ok, seriously, are you talking about this: BTC? So either it should load the Webfont resulting in BTC being displayed as "B with decoration", "invisible T", "invisible C" or your w3c/lynx on a non-unicode console should just display BTC … or your smart browser decides that there is something wrong with letters that have zero width so it defaults to another font. Which browser are you using?)

"B⃦TC" is shown by Konqueror/KHTML, Rekonq, and QupZilla.

Nobody browses with these except Richard Stallman and Co.

[theymos]

Is the "TC" supposed to actually be invisible? I see it as "B⃦TC"

Sounds like your browser is ignoring parts of my webfont, likely in violation of standards.

Anyone know how to fix this?

[giszmo]

Is the "TC" supposed to actually be invisible? I see it as "B⃦TC"

Sounds like your browser is ignoring parts of my webfont, likely in violation of standards.

Anyone know how to fix this?

Hey don't tell me there are browsers that violate standards!!!!1!!

I guess using Ƀ could fix that issue.

Ok, you made that font with T and C having 0pt/px/cm width. Can you try 1px instead? My guess is that konqueror tries to fix missing letters and a 1px letter would most likely not trigger such a "fix" but with the letter being invisible it would still yield almost the same result.

And please while you are at it, un-bold it

[bg002h]

The B double vertical strokes is a Unicode symbol?  What is its code?  I can't find it on any list of Unicode symbols (maybe I'm not looking in the right place?).

Yep. Unicode defines symbols like this using "combining" characters (the "already combined" characters exist only for compatibility with legacy encodings such as Latin-1), so for B⃦ you do:

• U+0042 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER B
• U+20E6 COMBINING DOUBLE VERTICAL STROKE OVERLAY

This works to some extent for all possible combinations (apparently some people are getting blocks, though?).
From there, fonts can specialize with "ligatures" (renderings that represent a sequence of characters) - which is where things can definitely use improvement.

I see...so it will require two codes to generate...in time I suppose the implementation will catch up with the spec. I get Bbox on my iPad on iOS 6.

[greyhawk]

And please while you are at it, un-bold it

Seconding this request.

[Vandroiy]

Wow! Calm down! There are many contracts done in Dollar, Peso, Brazilian real, Nicaraguan córdoba, Tongan paʻanga,  Cape Verdean escudo,  Portuguese escudo and none of the involved countries ever got any of the others into legal trouble about the $ sign.
$ (disambiguation)

I'm not talking about countries getting into legal trouble... how does that even work? I mean "OMG you scammer, I obviously meant Nicaraguan córdoba!". Imagine people in Thailand start using BTC!

We're not damned imposters of anything else. There's no reason to use that other than it looking "familiar", which I also find wrong for Bitcoin. It's a stupid choice, and it doesn't need a great analyst to see that.



Ƀ really doesn't look like a bad choice. I never liked the color scheme people advertise with it, but the symbol seems perfect.

[greyhawk]

Wow! Calm down! There are many contracts done in Dollar, Peso, Brazilian real, Nicaraguan córdoba, Tongan paʻanga,  Cape Verdean escudo,  Portuguese escudo and none of the involved countries ever got any of the others into legal trouble about the $ sign.
$ (disambiguation)

I'm not talking about countries getting into legal trouble... how does that even work? I mean "OMG you scammer, I obviously meant Nicaraguan córdoba!". Imagine people in Thailand start using BTC!

People in Thailand already use BTC.

[herzmeister]

Ƀ really doesn't look like a bad choice. I never liked the color scheme people advertise with it, but the symbol seems perfect.

I like it too, and about the criticism that it looks almost like the number 8, maybe serifs should be added, like:

[giszmo]

Ƀ really doesn't look like a bad choice. I never liked the color scheme people advertise with it, but the symbol seems perfect.

I'm not against Ƀ neither. It's my preference. I'm just saying that even the $ sign would be fine with me if the majority here wishes to use it. I just don't like to not have an agreement that I can push on Wikipedia or other pages. I'm pretty sure that a consensus would rule out …

I like it too, and about the criticism that it looks almost like the number 8, maybe serifs should be added, like:

… custom solutions and symbols that just render badly on 50% of all computers.

[dree12]

Is the "TC" supposed to actually be invisible? I see it as "B⃦TC"

Sounds like your browser is ignoring parts of my webfont, likely in violation of standards.

Anyone know how to fix this?

Ligatures would, and they would fix the copying problem too (hint, hint).

[bg002h]

The B double vertical strokes is a Unicode symbol?  What is its code?  I can't find it on any list of Unicode symbols (maybe I'm not looking in the right place?).

Yep. Unicode defines symbols like this using "combining" characters (the "already combined" characters exist only for compatibility with legacy encodings such as Latin-1), so for B⃦ you do:

• U+0042 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER B
• U+20E6 COMBINING DOUBLE VERTICAL STROKE OVERLAY

This works to some extent for all possible combinations (apparently some people are getting blocks, though?).
From there, fonts can specialize with "ligatures" (renderings that represent a sequence of characters) - which is where things can definitely use improvement.

I see...so it will require two codes to generate...in time I suppose the implementation will catch up with the spec. I get Bbox on my iPad on iOS 6.

It renders correctly on my laptop...

[Hasimir]

My vote is for the Thai Baht. It's clean, elegant and standard.

This isn't a vote; B⃦ has been the standard symbol since the beginning, and there is no good reason to change that. This is just Atlas trying to turn Bitcoin into mere "Silk Road currency".

Except not every implementation of Unicode displays whatever symbol that is.

In Firefox 15 on OS X Leopard I see the letter B followed by "20E6" for a Unicode symbol that won't display (Combining Double Vertical Stroke Overlay).  In Emacs I see B followed by a different symbol (Both Firefox and Emacs are configured to use UTF-8 on my system).

The problem is that you've opted for a UTF-16 character instead of a UTF-8 character.  UTF-8 is far more common and accessible.  This is why, like shamoons, I argued in favour of using the Thai Baht symbol last year.

The only argument against using ฿ is that it is used for THB aleady.  On the other hand $ is already used for USD, CAD, AUD and NZD.  While ¥ is used for Yen and Yuan.  Currencies sharing symbols is nothing new, that's why we have three letter codes for them as well.

Once again, I don't see any problem with using the baht symbol for Bitcoin and it has the added advantage of displaying correctly on a wide range of systems.

This was debated in detail last year and my post in that thread (which included a couple of other suggestions in addition the the baht) is here.  My opinion in my first paragraph hasn't changed:  I think that the symbol ought to be an existing UTF-8 symbol so that it can be readily used on most systems or browsers and not require additional fonts to be installed.

BTW, there's a poll in that thread from last year which was resoundingly in favour of using the baht symbol.

[Hasimir]

Uh, guys... what am I missing here?

See, this is exactly the problem of selecting a UTF-16 symbol over a UTF-8 symbol.  If you're going to select a standard then go for the widest implementation of Unicode, which means UTF-8 and not UTF-16.

[Hasimir]

More to the point, I can see the other symbols here just fine.  If B⃦ is supposed to be the best symbol, and I (and others) cannot see it properly on standard systems, perhaps it would be better to move to a different symbol that IS displayed properly on a standard system.

Images seem to be working fine until mainstream fonts are updated. Thankfully, we also have webfonts now.

Which is fine if everything you do is on the web, but not everything is and it should not have to be.

[Luke-Jr]

My vote is for the Thai Baht. It's clean, elegant and standard.

This isn't a vote; B⃦ has been the standard symbol since the beginning, and there is no good reason to change that. This is just Atlas trying to turn Bitcoin into mere "Silk Road currency".

Except not every implementation of Unicode displays whatever symbol that is.

If they don't, it's a bug.

The problem is that you've opted for a UTF-16 character instead of a UTF-8 character.  UTF-8 is far more common and accessible.

B⃦ is standard UTF-8, it is not UTF-16.

Once again, I don't see any problem with using the baht symbol for Bitcoin and it has the added advantage of displaying correctly on a wide range of systems.

I'm not addressing whether baht is an acceptable replacement or not; just the reality that it isn't the current standard BTC symbol.

[bg002h]

My vote is for the Thai Baht. It's clean, elegant and standard.

This isn't a vote; B⃦ has been the standard symbol since the beginning, and there is no good reason to change that. This is just Atlas trying to turn Bitcoin into mere "Silk Road currency".

Except not every implementation of Unicode displays whatever symbol that is.

If they don't, it's a bug.

The problem is that you've opted for a UTF-16 character instead of a UTF-8 character.  UTF-8 is far more common and accessible.

B⃦ is standard UTF-8, it is not UTF-16.

Once again, I don't see any problem with using the baht symbol for Bitcoin and it has the added advantage of displaying correctly on a wide range of systems.

I'm not addressing whether baht is an acceptable replacement or not; just the reality that it isn't the current standard BTC symbol.

How long until implementations work for most people? 1 year, 5 years, a decade?