Friday, February 13, 2004
The Bookshelf Symbol 7 font "controversy"

Despite the expected context of this blog this is not about Personal Computers. It about being Politically Correct...

Recently Microsoft has issued an update to a Bookshelf Symbol 7 font. The font was found to contain "unacceptable symbols". A press-release with apologies has been promptly issued. The blame went to poor oversight and artist mistake. Apparently what caused the whole thing was a presence of two swasticas in the font. A few things are worth mentioning:

  1. The actual font file has a copyright of Ricoh Corp inside - it seems that it was licensed from Ricoh
  2. The swastika (or swastica) was borrowed by Nazis from ancient India culture as an Arian symbol. Other cultures has also embraced this symbol to some extend. Most notably in Buddhist countries, especially in Japan, this symbol is associated with Good Luck and Prosperity.
  3. The swastika in the font was a part of a range of Japanese (Kanji) characters.
  4. This character (or rather its mirror image is a sign used on maps in Japan to designate the location of Shinto temples (can be seen on Yahoo Maps)
  5. Here are the screen shots of the font before and after:

Before:

After:

Life | Microsoft
2/13/2004 10:10:25 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [16]  | 
2/13/2004 12:54:29 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
That's interesting - they removed the Star of David too. Another controversy on the horizon?
Steve Hiner
2/16/2004 7:37:15 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
Didn't the nazi swastika have the arms in the opposite direction as the ancient symbol (one was CW the other CCW)?
Chris Tacke
2/20/2004 11:45:36 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
There are two versions of the ancient symbol - CW and CCW for good and evil. See J-Walk's blog at http://j-walkblog.com/blog/index/P12888/
Alex Feinman
6/2/2004 11:44:09 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)
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