My minuscule pet peeve is that having only one source where the number 5 is depicted with a triangle (all others show it as a separated segment, like the number 6 but shorter), that's how every article or library draws it. It's all because the guy who wrote a book about them saw that source first so he based his figures on it.
As mentioned in the blog, I think the horizontal layout makes more sense too (in terms of writing order). But just like the triangle-5, the vertical layout is more commonly seen, so that's what I stuck with.
autoexec•Feb 18, 2026
It might not be accurate but it does seem like it'd be easy to mistake a 5 and 6 without the triangle. Especially when the characters are being hurriedly written by hand. If I were going to use this system, I'd be sticking with the triangle.
culi•Feb 18, 2026
I wish the 6 was a triangle in the other direction instead
klondike_klive•Feb 18, 2026
Wow, it's a while since I've seen one of those lists of hundreds of vampires that you have to deselect!
dcanelhas•Feb 18, 2026
Shouldn't 523 in that list of "other numbers" actually be 522?
3 Comments
Here's a small summary about the numbers with many examples: https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2020/20290-cistercian-digits.pdf
I wrote a font for these, which does use the triangle-5 and the vertical layout: https://bobbiec.github.io/cistercian-font.html (recent discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46939312)
And my associated writeup: https://digitalseams.com/blog/making-a-font-with-9999-ligatu... .
As mentioned in the blog, I think the horizontal layout makes more sense too (in terms of writing order). But just like the triangle-5, the vertical layout is more commonly seen, so that's what I stuck with.