Re: Phoenician

From: Mark Davis (mark.davis@jtcsv.com)
Date: Tue May 11 2004 - 12:15:19 CDT

  • Next message: Mark Davis: "Re: TR35"

    I do not always agree with Michael, but your conclusion is absurd.

    1. Michael has made some very good contributions to the work of script encoding,
    which involves quite a bit of work. Experts in academic communities are free to
    do the same; and if they care about their areas of work, they will. And unless
    they are living in caves in the mountains of Tibet, there is no reason for them
    not to be aware of Unicode and its impact of the ability to encode text on their
    area of study.

    2. Michael is not the only person working on scripts; he is one of many people.
    So there is quite a bit of cross-checking, plus the opportunity for public
    review.

    3. My issue was not so much with Michael's conclusion as with the way in which
    he expressed himself.

    The issues with modern scripts are relatively straightforward (although even
    there, there can be reasonable disagreement). When we get into historic scripts,
    we do need to make the effort to refine the model that we are using to encode
    scripts, to avoid the kinds of pointless discussions that we have seen lately.
    This involves a review of the factors that we should take into account in
    determining whether to unify two scripts or not, to make sure that they make
    sense for historic scripts. That is already on the agenda for the next UTC
    meeting in June.

    Mark
    __________________________________
    http://www.macchiato.com
    ► शिष्यादिच्छेत्पराजयम् ◄

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk@qaya.org>
    To: "John Cowan" <cowan@ccil.org>
    Cc: "Mark Davis" <mark.davis@jtcsv.com>; <unicode@unicode.org>
    Sent: Mon, 2004 May 10 07:48
    Subject: Re: Phoenician

    > On 08/05/2004 11:42, John Cowan wrote:
    >
    > >Mark Davis scripsit:
    > >
    > >
    > >
    > >>- But I'm good at it, because invariably when I say it's a tree,
    > >>I agree with myself.
    > >>
    > >>
    > >
    > >Hardly. If the rest of you hadn't agreed with his judgments most of the
    > >time, the Roadmap might look quite different. It's more like Potter
    > >Stewart on pornography.
    > >
    > >
    > >
    > But have the others agreed with his judgments because they are convinced
    > of their correctness? Or is it more that the others have trusted the
    > judgments of the one they consider to be an expert, and have either not
    > dared to stand up to him or have simply been unqulified to do so? It
    > amazes me that all of the existing scripts have apparently been encoded
    > without any properly documented justification apart from one expert's
    > unchallenged judgments.
    >
    > --
    > Peter Kirk
    > peter@qaya.org (personal)
    > peterkirk@qaya.org (work)
    > http://www.qaya.org/
    >
    >
    >



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