Re: The politics of Unicode (was: an endlessly coruscatin...

From: peter_constable@sil.org
Date: Wed Sep 29 1999 - 23:13:25 EDT


       Subject:
       Re: The politics of Unicode (was: an endlessly coruscating
       threa
       ---------------------------------
       
       
       Ken Whistler wrote:
>Michael Everson gave pretty much the entire list of
       problematical unifications. (There are a few others that are
       notable problems for
       rendering, such as baseline ellipsis versus midline ellipsis.)
       All
       of these are under debate, and there are no foregone
       conclusions for any of them.

       I seemed to have missed that. Can you give me a clue in finding
       it?

>I'm willing to state that the vast proportion of everything in
       Latin that needs to be represented is already representable.

>There are known specific holes. Michael Everson and the
       Finnish and Swedish NB's are working on an explicit Finno-Ugric
       Phonetic Alphabet proposal; we are aware that FUPA is not yet
       fully covered. But that is the kind of place you have to go to
       find holes in the Latin coverage -- not national or minority
       language orthographies.

       I'm not so sure that there isn't anything from minority
       languages; I suspect a small number of add'l needs, though I
       don't yet have good information to offer.

>That's the *Tifinagh* script. And no you wouldn't. The actual
       Tamazight language promotion efforts on the web are working to
       standardize the Latin form. Look them up. The Tifinagh script
       has a certain iconic importance to Berbers, and does appear,
       but is mostly of scholastic interest, and is not being pushed
       strongly by those building Tamazight websites.

       Could it be that it's not being used for websites for lack of
       standard implementation? I have a slight awareness of some
       current usage of Tifinagh script in at least Niger and Burkina
       Faso (slight in the sense that I know it's being used but I
       don't know any details).

       Peter



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