Re: New contribution

From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Thu Apr 29 2004 - 08:17:27 EDT

  • Next message: Peter Kirk: "Re: New contribution"

    On 29/04/2004 04:42, C J Fynn wrote:

    >Peter Kirk <peterkirk@qaya.org> wrote:
    >
    >
    >
    >>Personally, I think it is a reasonable proposal, but it
    >>should not be accepted on the say-so of a single proposer
    >>apart from a consensus.
    >>
    >>
    >
    >Acceptance of the proposal would at least get the issue out of the way and then
    >people could get on with other things and choose for themselves whether or not
    >they wanted to make use the Phoenician characters - or to encode everything
    >using Hebrew characters. ...
    >

    Not really. Acceptance of the proposal would create an expectation that
    Phoenician texts should be encoded with the new Phoenician characters,
    and so that existing practices are wrong and should be changed. That
    expectation is of course not acceptable to scholars. Also not acceptable
    is the inevitable result that Phoenician texts will be encoded in two
    different ways, leading to lack of searchability and potentially total
    confusion. I can just imagine texts already written in Phoenician
    encoded as Hebrew being edited and marked up with the new Phoenician
    characters. A recipe for disaster!

    >... OTOH rejection of the proposal would pretty well mean
    >that it is never going to be possible for anyone to encode Phoenician text with
    >Phoenician Unicode characters.
    >
    >

    No, because rejection is not forever. While the Unicode stability policy
    implies that once a proposal has been accepted that acceptance can never
    be reversed, a proposal which has been rejected can be resubmitted and
    accepted - although presumably the UTC would do so only if provided with
    some good new evidence that the change of mind is necessary. So your
    argument that acceptance of a doubtful proposal is better than rejection
    is compeletly backwards.

    >Even if there is only a small minority of people who want Phoenician characters
    >encoded, encoding them would not prevent the alleged majority who want to use
    >Hebrew characters to encode Phoenician texts from doing this.
    >
    >

    If there is such a small minority, let us hear from them. As far as I
    know this is a minority of one. Unicode is a standard for data
    interchange, and data interchange implies at least two parties. So a
    script should not be accepted for the convenience of just one person who
    wants it to be a distinctive script, especially as he is not actually a
    user of the script.

    >Since a formal proposal has now been submitted, formal objections to that
    >proposal can also be submitted.
    >
    >

    Thanks for the reminder. I will do this.

    >- Chris
    >
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    -- 
    Peter Kirk
    peter@qaya.org (personal)
    peterkirk@qaya.org (work)
    http://www.qaya.org/
    


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