User talk:Avelludo/Archives/2021/August

Cruzeiro symbol

Thanks for creating the Brazilian cruzeiro article! However, I see that an anonymous editor changed all currency symbols from "Cr$" to "₢". To my knowledge, that is quite wrong: the symbol was "₢, but was commonly rendered "Cr" or "Cr$". See for example this cover and this stamp. Even if "₢" was the official symbol at some point, by 1960 everybody used it with a dollar sign; and it is hard to believe that the sign would have been added by common usage.
If you don't object, I will restore "Cr$" everywhere on that page.
All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 23:39, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't object at all! As a matter of fact, I haven't even managed to find any examples in media from the time using "₢" by itself. I've tried tracing back the creation of the "₢" symbol – it seems it was already present on Unicode v1, and I haven't managed to find their reasoning for including it. So I fully agree it should be reverted until evidence is found supporting its use! — Avelludo 00:01, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

The symbol "₢" was indeed used in Brazil, and the official currency symbol (as of the creation of first cruzeiro in 1941) apparently was indeed "₢". A "₢" key was available on some typewriters (upper right, next to the "$") and probably in some metal font sets. However, it was often written as two separate letters "Cr", even in printed material (like the above magazine cover). I recall seeing "₢" in older texts, but I don't recall seeing the "₢" used alone, anywhere, anytime... --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 01:02, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

PS. This] is a transcription of the decree from 1942 that created the cruzeiro. Paragraph 2 says "Amount of money, whatever their value, shall be written preceded by the symbol Cr $".
Sin that HTNL is a transcription, it is still in doubt whether the "Cr" was two letters or the glyph "₢". But since the decree had to be published on the official gazette, which probably did not have that symbol in its font box, it seems likely that it was 2 letters. Then the "₢" would have been a ligature invented later by font designers...--Jorge Stolfi (talk) 01:54, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Funnily enough... I had been writing a blog post on the use of the dollar sign in Brazilian currencies (with either one or two strokes) some months ago, and I stumbled upon that exact issue: did the original document for the Cruzeiro use a single-stroke S, or did it originally use a double-stroke S but the modern HTML recreation of the document lacks the support for it?

So I filed a Lei de Acesso à Informação (LAI) request for the original page, and lo and behold, it had 1 stroke. But that page is also useful now in showing that they did separate the "C" from the "r", and wrote it as "Cr $" (with even a space in between!), instead of using a "₢". — Avelludo 02:08, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

I've made the full page, as it was sent to me, available online here. Hopefully it's useful to you or someone else in the future :) — Avelludo 03:18, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Wow, wonderful! May I suggest that you upload both files to the Wikimedia commons? (Since it is an official government document, there is no copyright on that page; it is public domain.)
All the best, Jorge Stolfi (talk) 11:59, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

File:Decreto-lei 4791 de 5 de outubro de 1942.pdf

File:Decreto-lei 4791 de 5 de outubro de 1942 (Cr$).png

Done! — Avelludo 16:17, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

On the reorganization of the "cruzeiro" pages

Hi! Splitting the "cruzeiro" article into separate articles is a good idea. However, Wikipedia articles (unlike dictionary entries) are about concepts, not words. Therefore, it is not appropriate to have a single article about three distinct currencies, that existed in two widely separated periods, just because they have the same name.
Thus the current organization seems adequate: a single Brazilian currency article that has a brief historic summary from colonial times to the present, and points to separate artciles for each currency (that already exist). The Brazilian cruzeiro should be just a disambiguation page with links to the general article as well to the sub-articles with "cruzeiro" in their names.
What do you think? --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 12:16, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

That's totally fine by me! I didn't want to do anything too drastic when I created the individual articles, as I didn't know if the changes would be well received; but seeing as there doesn't seem to be any objections to it, I feel like it would be fine to make the Brazilian cruzeiro a disambiguation page, and solidify the move — Avelludo 16:21, 15 August 2021 (UTC)