on 4/20/01 1:34 PM, Michael Everson at everson@egt.ie wrote:
> At 10:20 -0400 2001-04-20, Dean A. Snyder wrote:
> They only complained about the repertoire being unready.
Yes, to the tune of only 30% ready - that's the figure I recall from the
Chicago meeting. That seems to me like saying "Let's propose a 40 character
ASCII set" (but even worse given the complexity of Hierglyphic).
> We should, at a minimum, work on the architecture and the Gardiner
> repertoire, which enjoys non-scholarly popularity and for which there
> exists already non-Unicode software support.
I hope you are not proposing, in principle, that we just go ahead and encode
every "non-scholarly" but popular script system supported by some computer
software somewhere, even if the users who have the most interest vested in
the encoding are the scholars themselves (and they are saying the state of
the art prevents a useable encoding at the time). I think that would be
reckless - particularly if it would jeapordize a useable encoding in the
future for the very community that needs it the most.
> We have been in discussion with Egyptologists, including those who
> devised the Manuel de codage.
And what are THEY saying about a Hieroglyphic Unicode proposal?
>> And, if it isn't the case now, I would also propose that relevant input on
>> proposals should somehow be formally tied to and registered with the various
>> proposals themselves.
>
> Not sure what you mean by this.
I mean, officially attached to the very proposal itself should be the
relevant documents that either support or undermine the proposal, so we
don't get into the situation where we just assume that it's ok because we
don't NOTICE anything negative associated with it after a few years.
> There was a position paper from
> Germany on the repertoire to which I responded, but those scholars
> have not participated in direct discussions with us yet.
Why haven't they?
----------
[Rick McGowan in a private email has pointed out to me that there is an
email list for Hierglyphic encoding that apparently has little traffic right
now. Maybe it's because it really is too early in the process of scholarly
investigation into the script system to propose an encoding. In which case,
I would suggest we note that on the proposal, shelve it, and not get itchy
to push it through prematurely. That's my only concern.]
Respectfully,
Dean A. Snyder
Senior Information Technology Specialist, Humanities
Research and Instructional Technologies, 167 Krieger Hall
School of Arts and Sciences, 426A Gilman Hall
The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA 21218
410-516-6021 office
410-961-8943 mobile
410-516-5508 fax
dean.snyder@jhu.edu email
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