Re: Berber/Tifinagh (was: Swahili & Banthu)

From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Sun Nov 09 2003 - 13:30:41 EST

  • Next message: Michael Everson: "Re: Berber/Tifinagh (was: Swahili & Banthu)"

    From: "Michael Everson" <everson@evertype.com>
    > At 17:54 +0100 2003-11-09, Philippe Verdy wrote:
    > >From: "Michael Everson" <everson@evertype.com>
    > >> When we encode Tifinagh we will encode Tifinagh. We will not
    > >> meta-encode it for ease of transliteration to other scripts.
    > >
    > >Yes that was the intent of my suggestion, I don't say that this must
    > >be done. But what would be wrong if a font was created for the
    > >Tifinagh script that would display Latin-based glyphs with
    > >diacritics rather than historic glyphs?
    >
    > I think you should go back and learn about the characater/glyph model
    > if you think this is a good idea.

    I think we are bothering each other, simply because of mutual
    misunderstanding. There's nothing in my question above that breaks that
    model: the abstract character coded in the Tifinagh script is kept unchanged
    and separated from the actual glyph it uses when rendering.

    So my question is, once again: would a font that would display pointed Latin
    glyphs from Tifinagh script code points really break the Unicode model? If
    not, then we have a convenient way to define Tifinagh keyboards / input
    methods based on this _apparent_ transliteration. This still requires a
    specific mapping to codepoints in the keyboard driver when set to input for
    Tifinagh, allows editing with a set of glyphs that a user can read, and then
    render it transparently with a real Tifinagh font.

    This would be a great tool for example on web site: the same text or web
    page could be displayed with the Latin glyphs or with the historic Tifinagh
    glyphs, by only selecting a distinct font. So a page in Berber would be
    composed once, and readable from both communities that can read either the
    Latin script or the Tifinagh script, and there would be now no need to use
    one of the many kludge conventions that exist for that language when
    presenting contents in Berber (notably for those pages that are coded with a
    mix of Latin letters, Greek letters, or symbols like dollar and asterisk...

    The purpose of this suggestion (which does not affect the separation between
    Unicode abstract characters and glyphs) is _better accessibility_. Nothing
    else.



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Nov 09 2003 - 14:08:49 EST