New UAE Dirham Currency Symbol

I'm guessing it's too early, but if anyone has information on the name, unicode value, or design specs for the new dirham symbol, please post here. Thank you! 

https://www.arabnews.com/node/2596669/business-economy
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2595058/business-economy

Comments

  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,154
    Apparently, it's going to need two Unicode values, since the symbol with a circle around it stands for the digital Dirhem.
  • George Thomas
    George Thomas Posts: 654
    edited April 16
    Your guess about being too early is correct. It has only been about three weeks since this was announced. No indications on the Unicode site that this has even been proposed yet. After that, the proposal follows a defined process which can take a lot of time.
    Specifications/guidelines and a vector file are here:
    https://www.one-fs.com/p/the-new-uae-dirham-symbol-and-digital
  • No proposal yet. I've been trying to connect with the Central Bank of UA via Microsoft colleagues in UAE to find out what their wishes are wrt broad support of the Dirham sign in text.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,968
    edited April 16
    @Peter Constable So, they would need to have a proposal, and then that would go through the process... at best it would be months before we have even a tentative codepoint, yes?
  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 2,009
    At least it will be an easy character to draw. That will be helpful for the people tasked with adding it to thousands of existing typefaces.
  • Yes, a little easier to design than the Riyal! And yes, there will be two glyphs, one for the digital version. Thanks, everyone!
  • @George Thomas Thanks for the link!
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,364
    I wonder if Unicode will accept two characters for encoding, or handle the digital currency symbol with the enclosing circle character?
  • Peter Constable
    Peter Constable Posts: 236
    edited April 18
    Btw, here's the announcement from the UAE Central Bank: cbuae-unveils-new-dirham-symbol-en.pdf

    It doesn't mention one-fs.com, but I notice the page George Thomas provided has links to additional resources apparently from CBUAE, notably this (which I haven't found yet on the CBUAE site):
    The_UAE_s_National_Currency_Symbol_1743087376.pdf - Google Drive
  • I wonder if Unicode will accept two characters for encoding, or handle the digital currency symbol with the enclosing circle character?
    Something I find interesting about this: At first glance, when I saw the circled, multi-coloured version of the Dirham sign, my only thought was, "Ah! Fonts can have BW and COLRv1 glyphs." However, I was overlooking the circle: the circled/coloured version could have different metrics.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,364
    Interesting also that the document to which you linked, Peter, refers to one sign as the ‘National Currency Symbol’, but to the other as the ‘Digital Dirham Brand’ and ‘identity’. Unicode doesn’t encode brand marks per se.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,968
    True. But also, it would not be shocking if the folks who designed it were not aware that color fonts with gradients are an actual thing, now. They may not have realized that having it in fonts was even possible.