
New symbol for Indian Rupee - niyazpk
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/IIT-post-graduate-gives-Rupee-its-symbol/646761
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charliepark
That's interesting. I saw the contest they were having a week or two back, and
don't remember this as one of the entries. I'm not calling shenanigans or
anything, but I am curious about it. Of course, I could have just seen it and
forgotten it, as I have the memory of a goldfish. Also, I have the memory of a
goldfish.

~~~
niyazpk
You are correct. After close scrutiny they shortlisted 5 designs. Later
someone high up (in the government) did not like it and so they selected an
entirely new design for the symbol. Personally I do like this new one other
than the 5 shortlisted ones.

Her you can see the others: [http://trak.in/tags/business/2010/07/13/rupee-
symbol-shockin...](http://trak.in/tags/business/2010/07/13/rupee-symbol-
shocking-story/)

~~~
Retric
Yea, other than #4 they all look like they would take a while to draw
correctly.

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psychotik
So how do they about getting a unicode code-point for this, and the keyboard
mapping etc, for something like this?

~~~
fhars
They could either repurpose the old U+20A8 RUPEE SIGN or (less stupid) try to
get one of the unallocated Slots U+20B6 to U+20CF following the allocated
currency signs.

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nailer
I'd go with B as you say, because per the article Nepal and Pakistan use the
existing symbol for their own currencies.

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mortenjorck
I wonder if this will catch on faster domestically or internationally. I'm
thinking of the curious divide in Japan between the domestic use of the 円
kanji for Yen and the international ¥ symbol.

~~~
timcederman
I thought 円 was equivalent to 'dollar', while ¥ was its currency symbol,
equivalent to '$'.

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hernan7
For some reason this brings back memories of the "austral", the Argentinian
currency from the eighties. Had its own symbol and everything - too bad it
wasn't available in any computer or typewriter.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_peso#Austral.2C_1985....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_peso#Austral.2C_1985.E2.80.931991)

I think only newspapers had the means to print that symbol non-lamely. For the
rest of us, it was capital "A", backspace, equal sign. That was on a
typewriter, of course. Don't remember which hack we used when trying to write
the symbol on a text processor.

Later on, the zeroes started piling up again (hyperinflation will do that to
your currency) and they went back to the "peso" with the more sensible "$"
sign.

Found an image of the symbol:

<http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Argentine_austral>

~~~
eru
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_austral> also has a symbol and more
information.

Absolute Astronomy seems to be a mirror of Wikipedia.

And of course there's also the "Universal Currency Sign" ¤
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_(typography)>), which has it's own
history (and can be typed).

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revorad
Why does it need a second horizontal line cutting across?

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bluesmoon
If it didn't, it would just be the devanagari character र (Ra), which would be
incorrect since in devanagari, the currently used symbol for the Rupee is रु
(Ru). Now the reason they don't use the current devanagari symbol is because
that's not representative of the entire country since there are many official
languages, and few of them use the devanagari script.

~~~
revorad
Ha! So they come up with a symbol which is basically a distorted version of
the devanagari one.

~~~
compay
Well, really _any_ decision is going to leave them open to criticism like
this. Given that Hindi has more speakers in India than any other language, and
is not the only language that uses Devanagari I think it's a pretty defensible
choice.

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lionhearted
Interesting. Looks very pretty but also time consuming to draw - 4 lines and
not particularly easy transitions between them. I'll hazard a guess that
people will naturally evolve a stripped down version of it for common usage.

~~~
nreece
_time consuming to draw - 4 lines_

You can write it in just two strokes.

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balac
I can't believe the rupee didn't have a symbol, and I can't believe I never
noticed!

~~~
stereo
Many currencies don't. I think governments started noticing when the € symbol
became common.

We lost the pretty italian ₤ sign (two stripes, compare to the pound sign £)
when we switched to the euro. I also miss the german pfennig sign,
[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U%2B20B0_GERMAN_PENNY...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U%2B20B0_GERMAN_PENNY_SIGN.svg)
. We didn't even get the ¢ symbol in exchange.

~~~
eru
I never encountered the Pfennig sign in Germany--it must have been out of
fashion for at least a few decades. We always seemed to use DM and Pf.

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joubert
Cool. Btw, I like how the South African rand is simply a Latin "R".

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known
Will it be embedded in keyboard by default?

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khandelwal
I can't help but think that surely there's better problems to solve. I don't
get what's wrong with either INR or Rs - neither of which require a new
keyboard.

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Setsuna
>I can't help but think that surely there's better problems to solve.

This argument comes up every time the government introduces something new.

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thisduck
Anyone see any resemblances to:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle_and_hammer> ?

Not that I mind at all.

