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not that I agree with the final decision, but I can imagine "Play"/"Pause" to show up in a device manual and Smiling Poop as part of a chat message.

Neither applies to the "external link" symbol.




I can imagine it showing up in an instructional book or article about how to indicate to your web site visitors that a hyperlink is to an external site, or perhaps in a comment about the Unicode standard body rejecting it. Neither of those are any more contrived than play/pause buttons being in an instructional manual about a television remote that contains those symbols.


Why couldn’t the external link icon appear in technical documentation as it so often does?


Can you imagine it in paper documents or anywhere that is not hypertext?


Yes, I've seen it used as a way to steer the reader to open their browser for further information with URL written in plain text. Like hyper footnote


Yes, I would expect to see it in books about web design, for instance.


What's paper?




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