User:Incnis Mrsi/Deletion requests/Template:PD-Unicode
I would like to consult the creator first, but he declared a wikibreak for about two months into the future. Let’s analyze Sarang’s intentions now:
Deutsch: setzt bei Unicode-Grafiken die PD-Lizenz. Kann auch in Kategorien verwendet werden.English: With this license template all graphics of Unicode characters are tagged for Public Domain ("text" = "ineligible").It may also be used to tag a category, as it is done e.g. with Unicode.
Obviously, English text is different from German, and neither matches the stuff presently shown by the template and broadly translated by Commons volunteers. Sarang’s English text states that a “graphic” (a glyph?) of a Unicode character bearing the template belongs to “Public Domain”. It likely wasn’t intended to mean that “Unicode” is a kind of magic spell like {{PD-shape}} or {{PD-old-100}} making things PD. This was, probably, intended only for making those glyphs of Unicode characters that are free. Note that in the German text the word “all” is completely missing.
Note that the question “why is the specified glyph free” is absolutely not addressed is such translations as German and Russian and explained confusingly in English. How a character can be “published”? Perhaps, it is about glyphs extracted from Unicode charts? It would be a reasonable idea, but… did Sarang provide specific link for them, during six(!) years of the template’s existence? He didn’t. Did anybody of other Commons editors provide specific links? They did neither. And, if the sense of this PD declaration boils down to public domain for the specified glyph presented, then how Unicode [Consortium] is relevant at all to the licensing question? Let’s better make {{Free glyph}} with parameter specifying presumed license (and—possibly—source) of the glyph.
Finally, few phrases on the present text, more specifically, on the second line of the present English text. ASCII is a subset of Unicode. Almost every modern font—proprietary or free—includes glyphs for all 95 graphic characters of ASCII. They are “graphic representations of [respective] Unicode characters”. A typical modern font also contains other glyphs, and usually they are exclusively of Unicode characters. Are, for a proprietary font, all these glyphs free?
OK, let “Western layman’s Unicode” := (true Unicode) ∖ Windows-1252. Are even with restricted definition “all graphic representations of [Western layman’s] Unicode characters in the public domain”? Obviously no, because of Lucida Sans Unicode, Arial Unicode MS and so on. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 19:16, 20 January 2018 (UTC)