
Show HN: Inspired by a HN comment, half stars proposed for Unicode [pdf] - kens
http://files.righto.com/files/half-star-unicode.pdf
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kens
A few weeks ago, someone mentioned in a comment that Unicode was missing half
stars (e.g. for rating a movie __* 1 /2). I've written up a proposal
suggesting the addition of half stars to Unicode. Let me know of any feedback
and then I'll submit the proposal. In particular, any examples of half stars
in text would be very helpful. I've successfully proposed a couple of
characters before, so hopefully this proposal will work too.

[1] The comment suggesting half stars:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11959139](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11959139)

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shakethemonkey
Speaking as the smartass who made the original comment, your work is much
appreciated! If you need additional printed works for examples, I have quite a
few.

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kens
An example where the half star appears in the middle of text would be helpful,
e.g. "Die Hard 7 ( __1 /2*) is the latest movie..." In most of the examples I
have, the stars are kind of on their own rather than in the flow of text, and
that makes a difference to the Unicode committee.

If you have good examples, you can email my username @righto.com

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pasbesoin
Pull an Amazon product page and look at other items' ratings. Row of stars
followed by a numeric count of the number of ratings.

As just one example that immediately occurred to me, after having been on
Amazon yesterday.

By the way, you have or will add a hollow star, also per Amazon? Placeholder
for the higher possible rating(s) that an item has not received.

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x1798DE
Regarding "demand for other fractions", if you look at the current rendering
of the stars on Blood River (your example):

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2184798.Blood_River](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2184798.Blood_River)

It actually renders a much smaller sliver of a star than a half, at least for
me:

[https://i.imgur.com/QTBT7Ls.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/QTBT7Ls.jpg)

Not saying that needs to be implemented at the Unicode level, just saying
there is evidence of use of other fractions.

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contingencies
Good job - I remember the original discussion.

 _How about adding an outlined version as well as the filled version?_ This
division is shown in your examples. In fact, there are the following versions:
(0) Outlined star (1) Filled star (2) Half-filled, half-outlined star (3)
Half-filled, Half-'other color'-filled star (4) Half-filled, half-missing star

Seeing as multiple colors are a hassle and not really what Unicode codepoints
are designed for, option (3) could be ignored. Option (2) and (4) need LTR and
RTL versions.

I would comment directly but following the _.dk_ links at the bottom of the
document results in 404s.

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kens
I'm not sure what you are suggesting. The proposal includes both outlined and
non-outlined half stars (see page 4, "The suggested glyphs"). I think that's
(2) and (4) from your proposal. Are you suggesting something else?

Also, what/where is the broken .dk link?

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joshka
The link to half star at font awesome links to the BTC symbol.

~~~
kens
Thanks for finding that!

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dTal
My immediate first thought was "what about right-to-left half stars"?
Fortunately it's right there in the proposal. Good work!

