From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Wed Sep 03 2003 - 07:11:36 EDT
On 03/09/2003 02:45, Michael Everson wrote:
> At 08:11 +0100 2003-09-03, Paul James Cowie wrote:
>
>> I wonder if anyone can help me track down two punctuation symbols in
>> Unicode? - I've been through the charts and, try as I might, I can't
>> seem to locate them....
>>
>> They are used in the transliteration of cuneiform for partially
>> preserved signs and look like the very top portions, respectively, of
>> the parentheses marks : [ and ]
>>
>> I'm hoping that they are supported in Unicode, as they are used
>> frequently in Assyriological literature.
>
>
> These half brackets are not yet encoded. The CEILING characters could
> be used by some (and are recommended by some for this purpose) but in
> my experience neither cuneiformists nor medievalists have accepted the
> CEILING characters. A proposal for medieval Nordic characters will
> contain these.
What's the problem with these CEILING characters? They are recommended
not just "by some" but by the Unicode standard for "general-purpose
corner brackets". Do cuneiformists and medievalists really need
significantly different glyph shapes or properties? Do they just not
like the glyphs in existing fonts? Or is this a case of the "not
invented here" syndrome? We really can't start adding to Unicode
separate sets of visually identical punctuation characters for each
academic discipline. Are we next going to get proposals for separate
full stops and commas for Egyptology, for cuneiform transliteration, and
for medieval Nordic? Where does this stop?
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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