symbol for Metro

[Zox]

Hi all,

There is a symbol used in Paris for the Metro system,
which is a capital M inside a circle. It's used in
tourist guidebooks and in weekly papers and such.

Does HTML have an equivalent?

How about other well-known systems like the
London Underground ?

Thanks.

[Dylan Parry]

Zox wrote:

There is a symbol used in Paris for the Metro system,
which is a capital M inside a circle. It's used in
tourist guidebooks and in weekly papers and such.

Does HTML have an equivalent?

No. You'll need to create a image showing the symbol.

--
Dylan Parry - http://electricfreedom.org

A Flower?

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Thu, 6 Jul 2006, Dylan Parry wrote:

Zox wrote:

There is a symbol used in Paris for the Metro system,
which is a capital M inside a circle. It's used in
tourist guidebooks and in weekly papers and such.

Does HTML have an equivalent?

No.

Yes. Ⓜ = Ⓜ

Whether it will display on a wide range of browsers is another
question. Try it on some, using
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/...unidata24.html

Works for me, in several browsers, but then I've got a fair range of
i18n fonts installed.

You'll need to create a image showing the symbol.

It might be advisable, indeed. You could set the image's alt
text to alt="Ⓜ" for use by advanced browsers...

cheers

[Dylan Parry]

Alan J. Flavell wrote:

>>Does HTML have an equivalent?

No.

Yes. Ⓜ = Ⓜ

No. That is merely a capital M within a circle. It is _not_ the logo for
the Paris Metro.

--
Dylan Parry - http://webpageworkshop.co.uk

A Flower?

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Thu, 6 Jul 2006, Dylan Parry wrote:

Alan J. Flavell wrote:

>Does HTML have an equivalent?

No.

Yes. Ⓜ = Ⓜ

No. That is merely a capital M within a circle.

That's what I understood the original question to be asking for:

|| There is a symbol used in Paris for the Metro system,
|| which is a capital M inside a circle.

It is _not_ the logo for the Paris Metro.

Right. If it *was* specifically their logo, then you probably
wouldn't be allowed to use it without their permission. See related
discussion on the use of the PUA/CUS character for the Apple logo.

[Andreas Prilop]

On 6 Jul 2006, Zox wrote:

There is a symbol used in Paris for the Metro system,
which is a capital M inside a circle. It's used in
tourist guidebooks and in weekly papers and such.
Does HTML have an equivalent?

An image: http://www.paris.org/Metro/gifs/metroicon.gif

How about other well-known systems like the
London Underground ?

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/templates/tube...eader-logo.gif

[Andy Mabbett]

In message
<Pi*************************************@s5b004.rr zn.uni-hannover.de>,
Andreas Prilop <nh******@rrzn-user.uni-hannover.dewrites

>An image: http://www.paris.org/Metro/gifs/metroicon.gif

Do you suppose that it's meant to look that awful?

--
Andy Mabbett
Say "NO!" to compulsory ID Cards: <http://www.no2id.net/>

Free Our Data: <http://www.freeourdata.org.uk>

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Alan J. Flavell <fl*****@physics.gla.ac.ukscripsit:

>>Yes. &#x24c2; = Ⓜ

No. That is merely a capital M within a circle.

That's what I understood the original question to be asking for:

>>There is a symbol used in Paris for the Metro system,
which is a capital M inside a circle.

What the question asked for is somewhat unclear, but to me it seems that the
intent was to find a character that could be used as a logo-like symbol,
denoting the (Paris) Metro in a manner that makes the meaning obvious to
anyone who is familiar with Paris Metro. In that sense, I don't think
U+24C2 CIRCLED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M is the right answer. Or I could say:
if it is the answer, I would like to know what the question really was. How
would the symbol be used, and in which context?

You could try to make U+24C2 look more like the Metro symbol by setting its
color, but the real question is why you would present it as a character in
the first place. Characters are meant to be used in _texts_ whereas logos
and icons have use of their own as independent symbols, though possibly used
in conjunction with other symbols or texts.

On the practical side, if you use U+24C2 (no matter how you enter it in an
HTML document), then it will probably be seen correctly only by users who
have Microsoft Office installed so that they have Arial Unicode MS and by a
small number of users who have installed Code2000 or some of the rare fonts
that support this character, see
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unic...ontsupport.htm
Besides, people using IE would not see the character right even if they have
Arial Unicode MS, unless the browser has been set to use that font by
default (not a common or generally advisable choice by a user) or your
document explicitly suggests that font.

For completeness, I mention that an encircled "M" could also be written in
Unicode as letter "M" followed by U+20DD COMBINING ENCLOSING CIRCLE, but
this would be an even more problematic approach in practice.

The practical way is to present the symbol for Metro as an image. The alt
text depends, as usual, on the context and purpose, but it would typically
be alt="metro".

>It is _not_ the logo for the Paris Metro.

Right. If it *was* specifically their logo, then you probably
wouldn't be allowed to use it without their permission.

In that case, the symbol most probably would not have been included into
Unicode. Regarding intellectual property issues, fair use exemptions or
corresponding rules probably allow people to use the logo when they use it
honestly and with a good reason. Again, the specific intended use is unknown
here.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Sat, 8 Jul 2006, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
....

In that sense, I don't think U+24C2
CIRCLED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M is the right answer.

I wasn't enthusiastic about it in practical terms, but I wouldn't rate
it as actually wrong. Still, it's a point of view, I won't argue
about it.

On the practical side, if you use U+24C2 (no matter how you enter it
in an HTML document), then it will probably be seen correctly only
by users who have Microsoft Office installed so that they have Arial
Unicode MS and by a small number of users who have installed
Code2000 or some of the rare fonts that support this character,

MSIE's behaviour is more complex than that. I'm seeing the circle-M
in MSIE when Lucida Sans Unicode is selected. Even though SIL
Viewglyph says that the font does not contain the character. I
suspect (as on previous encounters with this kind of behaviour) that
IE is supplementing the font's repertoire by using glyphs from the
far-eastern (CJK) fonts which it installs when one enables support for
"Far Eastern" languages (in Win/XP), or, say, Japanese in Win/2K.

see
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unic...ontsupport.htm

Interesting resource, thanks, although it does say:
"This only includes fonts installed on this server."

I'm still missing a utility which could tell me "which of my installed
fonts contain a glyph for the character U+xxxx" ? Doing the converse
is easy, there are numerous utilities which will list the contents of
a given font, but I haven't seen one which will search the fonts for a
requested character.

Besides, people using IE would not see the character right even if
they have Arial Unicode MS, unless the browser has been set to use
that font by default (not a common or generally advisable choice by
a user) or your document explicitly suggests that font.

MSIE continues to show the glyph to me, even if I choose Tahoma.
Again, I think it's extending the selected font by using a CJK font.

For users, I really can recommend enabling CJK support, even though I
can't read any of the CJK languages. For developers, obviously it
could be a bit of a problem, as it then suggests that characters are
available when, for the default installation settings, they would not
be.

For completeness, I mention that an encircled "M" could also be
written in Unicode as letter "M" followed by U+20DD COMBINING
ENCLOSING CIRCLE, but this would be an even more problematic
approach in practice.

Agreed, which was why I deliberately didn't mention it :-}

It is _not_ the logo for the Paris Metro.

Right. If it *was* specifically their logo, then you probably
wouldn't be allowed to use it without their permission.

In that case, the symbol

Well, U+24c2 is a bona fide Unicode character, but it isn't the
Metro logo as such. I tried to make that distinction before. So it
hinges on what you mean by "symbol".

most probably would not have been included into Unicode.

There's at least one precedent as a Private Use Area character.

/
# NOTE: The graphic image associated with the Apple logo character is
# not authorized for use without permission of Apple, and unauthorized
# use might constitute trademark infringement.
0xF8FF # Apple logo # Roman-0xF0, Symbol-0xF0, Croatian-0xD8
\

cheers