From: Peter Constable (petercon@microsoft.com)
Date: Thu Apr 29 2004 - 09:54:03 EDT
> On a related issue, legibility is not the criterion. For the principle
> has been accepted that cipher scripts should not be encoded separately
> but considered as glyph variants of the underlying script. Phoenician
> script can easily be treated as a cipher for unpointed Hebrew script.
> This is not true to historical origins, but arguably it is true of
> modern use.
Where it is not true to historical origins, I would not reckon something
as a cipher. We may come up with other reasons to decide to unify, but I
do not think we should reach that decision because we consider it a
cipher.
I think a close historical relationship and behavioural equivalence are
minimally necessary requirements for unification.
Another possible criterion is conventionally distinct identities. E.g.
today we look at Cyrillic text, and we all say it's Cyrillic, and not
Greek, not Latin, not anything else. 3000 (or however many years ago),
would people have looked at Phoenician text and said unequivocably,
that's Phoenician, not paleo-Hebrew? Of course, we probably don't know
what they would have said back then. And today, we appear to be left
with our own ambivalence about the identities.
Peter Constable
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