I don't know enough about the issues to have my own opinion on the
Tetragrammaton, but I do have a question. How does the Tetragrammaton differ
from other cases where what could be called a "single word" has multiple
representations?
For example, in Japanese, the "single word" "36" can be written in many
ways. It can be 3+6, or either of two kana spellings of "sanjuu roku" or the
kanji spelling of "three ten six". The kanji can be either left to right,
right to left or top to bottom. It can be written in binary, too, as
"100100", which certainly represents the word "36" and might easily be
pronounced "sanjuu roku" by a Japanese programmer.
Aside from numbers, there are lots of bizarre ways a Japanese comic book
might choose to write a "word", which is why they have to use furigana. They
get so cute in their creative ways of writing a word that they have to tell
you in a separate furigana note what word they were writing.
Even in English, the same "word" can be spelled "No Parking" or "P+combining
circle with line thru it". Nobody reads the latter with any reading other
than "no parking".
Again, I'm not arguing against the Tetragrammaton. It's only one character,
and it may be an extremely helpful addition to UCS. It may be that the
extremely sacred nature of the Tetragrammaton sets it apart from the
examples I've used, or it may be its frequency of use, or the frequent need
to search for it in plain text combined with the difficulty of including all
possible equivalent sequences in each search. I'm just wondering what about
the Tetragrammaton distinguishes it from other cases where the same "word"
has multiple representations.
Thanks,
__Glen Perkins__
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Everson <everson@indigo.ie>
To: Unicode List <unicode@unicode.org>
Date: Wednesday, May 20, 1998 8:46 AM
Subject: SC2/WG2 URL for the Tetragrammaton proposal
The Tetragrammaton proposal is now housed on the WG2 website:
http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n1740/n1740.htm
-- Michael Everson, Everson Gunn Teoranta ** http://www.indigo.ie/egt 15 Port Chaeimhghein Íochtarach; Baile Átha Cliath 2; Éire/Ireland Guthán: +353 1 478-2597 ** Facsa: +353 1 478-2597 (by arrangement) 27 Páirc an Fhéithlinn; Baile an Bhóthair; Co. Átha Cliath; Éire
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