From: jcowan@reutershealth.com
Date: Fri Apr 30 2004 - 14:02:52 EDT
John Hudson scripsit:
> [H]ow should users encode Palaeo-Hebrew texts? With the new codepoints, or
> with the Hebrew codepoints? The text is Hebrew, but the appropriate glyph
> forms are ancient North Semitic. I do think there is the possibility of
> significant confusion, which is not grounds for refusing to encode the
> ancient North Semitic script, but does suggest that a specific
> recommendation should be made, either in the TUS or by an appropriate and
> representative scholarly body.
If Michael's proposal is accepted, there should be no confusion.
The twenty-two letters in the Phoenician block may be used,
with appropriate font changes, to express Punic, Neo-Punic,
Phoenician proper, Late Phoenician cursive, Phoenician papyrus,
Siloam Hebrew, Hebrew seals, Ammonite, Moabite, and Palaeo-Hebrew.
By implication, it is *not* proper to use the N2746 encoding for anything
else, nor to encode any of these writing systems in a different encoding
unless transliteration is explicitly intended. In particular, the
following writing systems are *not* to be encoded with the encoding of N2746,
as they are specified as distinct in N2311 and the Roadmaps:
(Square) Hebrew
Samaritan
Mandaic
Old South Arabian:
Epigraphic South Arabian
later South Arabian
Thamudic Ethiopic
Consonantal Ethiopic
Old North Arabic:
Dedanite
Lihyanite
Thamudic
Safaitic
Nabataean
Palmyrene
Hatran (aka Armazi)
Elymaic
Aramaic:
Aramaic proper
Middle Persian
Parthian
Sogdian
The ultimate question is: are these ten varieties of the 22CWSA
sufficiently distinct to require separate Unicode encodings, or not?
-- You escaped them by the will-death John Cowan and the Way of the Black Wheel. jcowan@reutershealth.com I could not. --Great-Souled Sam http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
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