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

From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Sun Nov 09 2003 - 13:41:25 EST

  • Next message: Don Osborn: "Re: Berber/Tifinagh (was: Swahili & Banthu)"

    At 19:30 +0100 2003-11-09, Philippe Verdy wrote:

    >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?

    Yes, Philippe. It is the same thing as mapping Cyrillic to ASCII
    letters. It is a hack. It is to be avoided. It is the Wrong Thing To
    Do.

    >If not, then we have a convenient way to define Tifinagh keyboards /
    >input methods based on this _apparent_ transliteration.

    This has nothing to do with encoding. You are harkening back to the
    hideous world of 8-bit font hacks of twenty years ago.

    >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.

    You are confusing character encoding, font, and input method.

    >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.

    Of course. We don't need the Georgian or Armenian alphabets any more
    either. Just make everything a glyph representation of Latin.

    >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...

    I am appalled. I thought you understood something about Unicode, Philippe.

    -- 
    Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com
    


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