From: John Hudson (tiro@tiro.com)
Date: Thu Apr 29 2004 - 18:15:18 EDT
Peter Kirk wrote:
> 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.
Okay, perhaps we're getting somewhere and beginning to understand each other. What you are
saying, in effect, is that there is already a de facto unification of Phoenician and
Hebrew encoding, employed by a significant user group.
I agree that if Unicode were to de jure disunify this de facto unification, the
implication would be that a) continued use of Hebrew characters for Phoenician script
would be problematic*, b) existing data so encoded should be re-encoded (fairly trivial
given the structural identity of the scripts), and c) not everyone will be happy.
* But less problematic than most legacy hacks and character masquerades, since
corresponding Hebrew and Phoenician characters would have identical properties.
John Hudson
-- Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com I often play against man, God says, but it is he who wants to lose, the idiot, and it is I who want him to win. And I succeed sometimes In making him win. - Charles Peguy
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