From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Thu Apr 29 2004 - 17:33:22 EDT
On 29/04/2004 12:08, John Hudson wrote:
> Peter Kirk wrote:
>
>>> Peter, using a systematic transliteration between two structurally
>>> identical scripts is not comparable to hack encodings.
>>
>
>> So, do you mean that the only reason hacked encodings for Greek or
>> Cyrillic are unacceptable is that there a a few Greek or Cyrillic
>> characters which do not have any direct Latin counterpart?
>
>
> No, I mean that transliterating, i.e. using the characters of one
> script to record text that might also or originally be written in
> another script, is not the same as having those characters masquerade
> as the other script. The fact that there is not always a one-to-one
> match between scripts simply makes the hacks more numerous and
> incompatible, since there is no systematic way to determine which
> characters in the hack should masquarade as the extra characters in
> the faked script. None of this is remotely similar to e.g. encoding
> the same Sanskrit language text in the Devanagari or Tibetan scripts
> according to the preference of the scholar/publisher.
Ah well, we are talking about different things here. Transliteration of
Greek or Cyrillic into Latin script is one thing. A quite different
thing is encoding Greek or Cyrillic with Unicode characters defined as
for Latin script but displaying these as Greek or Cyrillic with a
masquerading font (your word, I think, John). The latter corresponds to
what scholars of Phoenician etc currently do when they want to display
or print out in Phoenician script (or whatever you may call it). If they
continue to do so after a separate Unicode Phoenician script is defined,
they will surely be going against what the standard expects them to do.
>
> For the record, I have no objection to the encoding of the
> 'Phoenician' script as proposed, although I think the proposer and the
> UTC should consider a more generic name for the block that makes
> clearer that this encoding unifies specific script variants, any and
> all of which can also be encoded using Hebrew characters *if that is
> your wish*. It seems to me that anyone bright enough to wrap his or
> her head around Hebrew grammar should be able to handle this simple
> concept without 'total confusion'.
The confusion I am talking about is not of the scholars but of the
software. Imagine what it could be like to search for a Phoenician text
if some texts are encoded as Phoenician but others are encoded in Hebrew
with a masquerading font. Still worse, imagine what happens if a text
with a masquerading font is edited by someone using a true Phoenician
keyboard setup, or perhaps vice versa. There is then a real danger of
the two encodings being mixed in one document, which will make the text
unsearchable. So surely Unicode does not want to encourage the
continuing use of masquerading fonts alongside separate script encodings.
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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