From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Mon Dec 22 2003 - 07:27:15 EST
On 21/12/2003 16:01, Michael Everson wrote:
> ...
> I'm not interested in worrying about these bits of the Roadmap right
> now. ... This sniping, even when nice, isn't doing you any good, nor
> me. Can we drop this for a while, please?
>
Understood. Last night I was angry about an offlist reply and allowed my
emotions to spill over on to the list. Sorry.
But this matter is too important to be forgotten. And so I have decided
to make a formal submission to the UTC about this one, via
http://www.unicode.org/reporting.html. Here is the text of my
submission. I do not intend this to start further discussion on the
Unicode and Hebrew lists, but if others wish to discuss it I will do so.
=====================
The Roadmap to the BMP (http://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/bmp/) needs a
correction. The current situation is confusing to scholars of Aramaic
and other ancient Semitic languages. Aramaic is listed as one of the
"scripts for which proposals have been formally submitted to the UTC or
to WG2. There is generally a link to the formal proposal." But the
formal proposal to which it is linked,
http://www.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n2042.pdf, is not for the generic
Aramaic alphabet described in
http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2311.pdf, but for the Palmyrene
style or script which is listed as a separate script in N2311 and is
roadmapped in the SMP. There is no formal proposal for the generic
Aramaic alphabet, and so the status of Aramaic in the roadmap should be
changed to "scripts for which detailed proposals have not yet been
written", and the link to N2042 removed. N2042 might be listed instead
as a proposal for Palmyrene.
The situation is highly confusing to scholars of Aramaic because there
is no clear definition of what script is intended to be the roadmapped
Aramaic. The voluminous literature in classical and modern Aramaic is
regularly printed either in the Hebrew script, which is known to
scholars as the Aramaic square script, or in the Syriac script; most of
it was originally written in one of these scripts. Other scripts are
used by small communities or for special purposes, but these are either
already in Unicode (Latin, Cyrillic etc) or separately roadmapped
(Samaritan, Mandaic etc). Otherwise there is only a very small corpus of
inscriptional, papyrus etc material, mostly written with the same
alphabet as the Aramaic square script but with a variety of glyph styles
and shapes. When not working with facsimiles, scholars regularly
transcribe these texts into unpointed Aramaic square script, i.e.
unpointed Hebrew script. (See for example "The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic
Papyri", edited by E.G. Kraeling, Yale UP 1953, which gives facsimiles
and square script transcriptions of the Elephantine papyri.) There is
not and never has been a generic form of the Aramaic script distinct
from the square script which is identical to the Hebrew script (with its
Unicode reference glyphs).
There is no evidence of complex script behaviour (except that these are
all RTL scripts) or of mappings between these styles which are not one
to one.
There seems to be no evidence of a desire by any user community for
separate encoding either of a historic Aramaic script or of variants not
in modern use such as Palmyrene and Nabataean. Rather, the user
community is confused by the current roadmaps which seem to undermine
the current scholarly practice of using Aramaic square script for all
ancient (pre-Christian) Aramaic texts. This seems to be a case of
unnecessary multiplication of scripts, not requested by scholars, when
in fact there are merely glyph variations.
In view of this, I call for a review of the roadmaps and in particular
of the status of the Aramaic, Palmyrene, Nabataean, Elymaic and Hatran
scripts. Serious consideration should be given to unifying these scripts
with the Hebrew script, of which they appear to be glyph variants. The
separate status of Phoenician may also need to be reconsidered. Note
that I am calling for a review only of scripts listed in N2311 as not in
current use.
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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