From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Tue May 11 2004 - 07:54:02 CDT
On 10/05/2004 22:32, John Cowan wrote:
>Peter Kirk scripsit:
>
>
>
>>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?
>>
>>
>
>This is laughable.
>
>
Well, John, you yourself wrote only yesterday:
>If the rest of you hadn't agreed with his judgments most of the
>time, the Roadmap might look quite different.
>
I think "the rest of you" was intended to refer to the UTC, and "his" is
certainly Michael's. So, I was asking for an explanation of what you
wrote. I suggested two or three possible explanations. If there is
another one which I have missed, please tell me what it is. Surely it is
not laughable that "the others have trusted the judgments of the one
they consider to be an expert, and have ... been unqualified to" offer
other judgments. Indeed I would be pretty certain that this is quite
close to the truth. And it is a reasonable position considering that the
UTC members are not all script experts. The problem arises only if they
listen to one expert only and ignore other expert opinions.
>
>
>>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.
>>
>>
>
>It would be amazing if it were true, but of course it's absolutely false.
>
>
I am glad to hear it. Are these properly documented justifications on
the public record? Should I expect to find them in the appropriate
sections of proposals made to WG2? The justification is certainly
lacking in N2746, as Michael has more or less admitted.
>
>
>>And these two cases are hardly a good advertisement for the expert's
>>reputation. The Coptic/Greek unification proved to be ill-advised and is
>>being undone. As for the unified W and Q, well, I guess that if the
>>Kurds and others who use these letters in Cyrillic knew how this
>>decision would mean that their alphabet will never be sorted correctly
>>(unless they get round to tailoring their collations), they would make a
>>strongly argued case for disunification.
>>
>>
>
>Nobody writes Kurdish in Cyrillic any more: it's a historic use of the
>script only.
>
>
Really? Have you asked the Kurdish community living in central Russia,
and in Armenia? They were certainly using Cyrillic only four or five
years ago when I met some of them and saw a newly printed book in
Cyrillic and Latin script. It would rather surprise me if they have all
abandoned it completely in such a short time. If you like I will get
back in contact and check up on the details.
>In any event, Michael had *nothing* to do with those unifications.
>He has consistently pressed for disunification (rightly, IMHO).
>
>
Thanks for the clarification. I accept that I don't know all of the
history, and so I was assuming that what you said was correct, that
Michael's judgments had been accepted on most such issues.
>
>
>>Well, perhaps the expert can
>>feel how much his fingers have been burned by over-unification and so is
>>now pressing for everything to be disunified.
>>
>>
>
>Nonsense, and insulting nonsense to boot. Michael has never pressed
>for either total unification or total disunification, because both
>positions are absurd, and his position is never absurd. (I may
>disagree with it from time to time, and I am willing to press him for
>reasons, but I *always* respect his point of view.)
>
>This verbal sniping on a subject (the history of character encoding)
>you know nothing about is beneath you. Try and do better.
>
>
>
>>And then there is the matter of CJK unification, which I gather is still
>>rather contentious.
>>
>>
>
>Only among the invincibly ignorant.
>
>
>
This sounds like verbal sniping to me. Those who want to disunify CJK
may not be the majority, and their position may have been been rejected
by the UTC (so far - if they could post facto disunify Coptic, in
principle they could disunify CJK), but their position is not absurd,
and more than Michael's position on Coptic or Phoenician is absurd.
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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