Hacker News Reader

Brilliant. Roman numerals are, after all, just letters. The "why haven't they used them?" becomes pretty jarring once you think about it.

Roman numerals are not a place-value system and you can’t make a computer use Roman numerals just by switching to a custom font.

OpenType font shaping is shockingly powerful ([e.g.](https://blog.janestreet.com/commas-in-big-numbers-everywhere...), so I'd be surprised if someone hasn't made a Roman numeral font already.

Heh, I knew I should have said something about OpenType shenanigans :)

Roman numerals are a lot harder to do arithmetic with.

True. Maybe that's the reason why they chose that new system.