At 08:14 -0500 2002-03-14, John Cowan wrote:
>It would be easy to sketch the arguments:
>
>1) Involving Unicode with That Elvish Stuff will bring it into
>contempt and ridicule. We don't need this.
Nonsense. Contempt and ridicule by whom? The millions and millions of
readers worldwide of Tolkien's work who admire and appreciate his
literary and linguistic achievement? Or by some dour-faced accountant
Marley chained to his stockholders' interests?
(I wonder if either Bill Gates and Steve Jobs think the Tengwar are cool....)
>2) The people who want Elvish encodings are only doing it for
>the hell of it, and can very well carry on with kludges at one
>level or another. They don't need this.
People who study Egyptian are only doing it for the hell of it.
People who study Esperanto are only doing it for the hell of it. As
one of the twentieth centuries most influential writers, Tolkien's
work and manuscripts are studied, edited, and distributed. Scholars
and enthusiasts express a desire to exchange data in these scripts,
no less valid than the desire to encode WYNN for Old English (it
could easily be represented by "W".) New texts are constantly being
generated by users of these scripts *today*, and several
ISSN-registered refereed journals make regular use of them. What
difference between Tengwar and Deseret, except that Tengwar has been
*successful*?
>3) Life is too short to worry about fictional encodings.
>Nobody needs this.
While they are the product of a prodigious literary imagination, the
Quenya and Sindarin languages, the Tengwar and Cirth scripts, are in
fact *facts*, and if some people say they have a valid need to
exchange this data in a standardized way, then who are we to say no
to them?
-- Michael Everson *** Everson Typography *** http://www.evertype.com
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