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Proposal To Include Four-Arrow Symbols in Unicode: Page 1 of 4

This document proposes adding four arrow symbols to Unicode: arrows pointing up, down, left and right; and rotated versions pointing northwest, southeast, northeast, and southwest. These symbols are commonly used as cursor icons in operating systems to indicate an element can be moved or enlarged. The proposal provides evidence of the symbols' widespread and understood use, and argues their inclusion would simplify documentation by allowing textual references rather than images. Character properties are defined. Potential issues are addressed, noting the symbols are self-explanatory and completing an existing Unicode class.

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Rikza Sholihin
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76 views4 pages

Proposal To Include Four-Arrow Symbols in Unicode: Page 1 of 4

This document proposes adding four arrow symbols to Unicode: arrows pointing up, down, left and right; and rotated versions pointing northwest, southeast, northeast, and southwest. These symbols are commonly used as cursor icons in operating systems to indicate an element can be moved or enlarged. The proposal provides evidence of the symbols' widespread and understood use, and argues their inclusion would simplify documentation by allowing textual references rather than images. Character properties are defined. Potential issues are addressed, noting the symbols are self-explanatory and completing an existing Unicode class.

Uploaded by

Rikza Sholihin
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 4

L2/21-084

Proposal to include four-arrow symbols in


Unicode

Diego Guella <diego.guella.85@gmail.com>


3rd February 2021

Abstract
This is a proposal for adding 4 arrow characters, which show arrows pointing in four directions.
There are many arrow symbols in Unicode, but none of arrows pointing in four directions.
They are mostly found as cursor icons in popular desktop operating systems, indicating the
possibility of moving a user interface element in all directions, or the possibility of enlarging it.

1. Introduction
Graphical operating systems, in use since many decades, make use of different cursor pointers
which change when there is a different action which can be performed when moving the cursor over
some specific points.
For example, when moving over the left or right border of an operating system window, the cursor
changes to a double arrow: ↔, which is already included in Unicode as U+2194.
However, there are some cursors that have been in use for many decades, yet they still aren’t
available as Unicode characters. These are:

, which are cursors that indicate the possibility of moving the window, or any other
element, just by pressing on the element and dragging it around.

, which are rotated version of the previous cursors, which may again indicate the
possibility of moving a graphical element, or may indicate the possibility of enlarging it.
Adding these symbols would simplify and unify the writing of user guides where the description of
the behavior of a software application needs to talk about these behaviors.

2. Suitability for inclusion


These symbols do not appear in the Archives of Notices of Non-Approval. These symbols have
and
symbols, particularly, have an immediate meaning associated by the regular operating system
user as “this element may be moved around”. Semantically identifying these symbols allows for

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textual search, and reduce the use of binary images and single purpose symbol fonts in user guides
and manuals.
Moreover, these symbols can sometimes be obtained by overlapping two or more already available
Unicode characters, but such practice is not always available in written documents (this can be done
using some specially crafted HTML and CSS, but not in a regular word processor document).

3. Evidence of use in running text


I myself found the need to use these characters while writing user manuals for software while at
work for my company. Here it is an excerpt from one of such manuals:

 ↕(MOVE) moves the selected object [...] up, down, left or right.
(In the text, the ←↕→ sequence has been chosen in order to avoid inserting an image, since
character is not available, but it would have been a better fit.)
Looking on the Internet, using a search engine, the words “move cursor” return plenty of images of
the four-arrows (as it had been in use by operating systems from decades), and in particular another
technical document makes use of such character, the Mozilla Developer Manual for CSS:

move The hovered object may be moved.

Here is an example of two people discussing a problem in a software program:

Here is an excerpt of the GIMP program, describing the Move Tool, which is represented by the
four-arrows icon:

Here is an excerpt of the Xerox Alto User’s Handbook, where a symbol which can be considered a
font variation of one of these four-arrow symbols is used:

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(A copy can be downloaded from here)

4. Character properties
Suggested character properties for the proposed symbols are shown below:
2B74;UP DOWN LEFT RIGHT ARROW;So;0;ON;;;;;N;;;;;
2B75;NORTH-WEST SOUTH-EAST NORTH-EAST SOUTH-WEST ARROW;So;0;ON;;;;;N;;;;;
2B96;UP DOWN LEFT RIGHT TRIANGLE-HEADED ARROW;So;0;ON;;;;;N;;;;;
2B97;NORTH-WEST SOUTH-EAST NORTH-EAST SOUTH-WEST TRIANGLE-HEADED ARROW;So;0;ON;;;;;N;;;;;

5. Potential Issues
Some of the proposed symbols can already be displayed by HTML, using some tricks which
overlap already existing Unicode characters. The HTML/CSS example is shown here.
However, it would be desirable to have these symbols as single characters, in order to allow word
processor software to insert it, without the need to use fancy/complex tricks to display them, or raw
image insertion in running text.
The proposed symbols are not the kind of a traffic sign; for example, one can not refer to them as
“the stop sign”, or “the emergency exit sign”. Actually, it is very difficult to give a name to them,
such as “the four-arrows”, “the four-arrows with filled ending”, “the four-arrows looking north-west
through south-east, plus south-west through north-east”. One name people may give to the first two
is “the move indicator”, or “the move cursor”, but just looking at them, people immediately
understand their meaning.

6. Conclusion
are a good fit for
addition to Unicode. The first two have been in use in computer operating systems since decades.
Their meaning is well-understood by the reader and is now well-defined. Being able to search for it
in text would be useful. It completes a class of symbols already in the standard (the arrow ones),
actually combining some of them into a single character. Finally, it is letter-like in the sense that it
should match the surrounding font style.
Acknowledgments:

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• The author took some inspiration for writing this proposal from Proposal to Include IEC
Power Symbols and Proposal for addition of Group Mark Symbol

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