Not so current developments in typography

I wrote this post about the Indian rupee some years ago but never published it. Given the feeling of time suspended brought on by COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders (and suspension of normal life in general), I decided to publish rather than discard it.

My initial motivation was to come up with something interesting to say using combinations and permutations in meaning of the words “economics”, “typography”, “development”, and “current”. I DO love typography!

Currency of developing economies

Most countries have distinct identification symbols for their currencies, but until 2011, there was no official currency sign for the Indian rupee. Only `Rs’ was used to represent it.  India shared the abbreviated form of the rupee with Pakistan, Nepal, Seychelles and Sri Lanka.

India’s finance ministry organized a public competition to design a new symbol for the rupee. The successful designer was awarded Rs 2.5 lakh, but had to surrender the copyright to the government of India. The symbol chosen was

₹

which is U+20B9 in Unicode and ₹ in HTML. It is a blend of the Devanagri ‘Ra’ and Roman ‘R’.

PDF history and something special from Adobe

Part One: PDF history 

PDF is a formal open standard, ISO 32000. It was invented by Adobe Systems 17 years ago.

PDF = Portable Document Format

History of the PDF by Adobe Systems

The image links to a pleasant interactive timeline of Adobe Systems and its role in the development of the PDF. The chronology is in Flash, and thankfully free of any video or audio. Read more about Adobe Systems role in the history of PDF file development.

PDF files are more versatile than I realized, and

• are viewable and printable on Windows®, Mac OS, and mobile platforms e.g. Android™
• can be digitally signed
• preserve source file information — text, drawings, video, 3D, maps, full-color graphics, photos — regardless of the application used to create them

Additional PDF file types exist, including PDF/A, PDF/E and U3D. All are supported by Adobe software.