From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Fri Apr 30 2004 - 09:30:15 EDT
At 11:11 -0700 2004-04-29, John Hudson wrote:
>Peter, using a systematic transliteration
>between two structurally identical scripts is
>not comparable to hack encodings.
Vide Nuskhuri and Mkhedruli. Come on, gents.
Don't try to tell me that I don't know the
difference between a unifiable and a
non-unifiable script. We did a pretty good
roundup on what should be subsumed under
Phoenician script, and NO it is NOT just a 1:1
relationship of structurally identical scripts.
You can't shoebox everything into a couple of
mindless rules.
The place the scripts have in history, their
relevant descendants and antecedants, their
letterforms, all of that has a bearing in
identifying what is a unique script and what is
not.
It is reasonable to set a German restaurant menu
with "Bratwurst mit Senf" written in Fraktur, or
an Irish restaurant menu with "Bagún agus
cabáiste" written in Gaelic type, and expect
people to be able to read it. (Sütterlin is a
hard style of Fraktur, with which people under 50
are mostly unfamiliar, but it is not a different
script, and its ductus isn't even all that
bizarre if you know about Fraktur.
It is not reasonable to set a Georgian restaurant menu in Nuskhuri script.
It is not reasonable to set a Hebrew restaurant menu in Phoenician script.
-- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
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