From: James Kass (jameskass@att.net)
Date: Sat May 22 2004 - 14:38:05 CDT
Michael Everson wrote,
> Anyone have any comments about the numbers proposed for the
> Phoenician encoding?
The proposed PHOENICIAN NUMERAL TWENTY is actually a ligature of
two PHOENICIAN NUMERAL TENs and should be encoded as:
TEN plus ZWJ plus TEN
Treating such ligatures properly, that is -- using ZWJs, would allow
as yet unattested Phoenician numerals, like the NUMERAL THIRTY
ligature, to be expressed in plain text without having to wait for
the approval of new characters. Also, certain processes should
ignore the ZWJs in order to assure that searching for the number
'thirty' would find both the ligated numeral and the identical number
represented in the conventional fashion in plain text. Furthermore,
the ligation approach eliminates problems caused if we want to
have numerals appear in the charts in ascending order and we've
failed to leave any open slots in the charts for this purpose.
Of course, none of the above is actually serious, but since Michael has
requested comments more than once (or there's an echo on the server),
I thought I'd start the ball rolling, as it were.
Seriously, are there any problems with the Phoenician numerals?
Any controversy? Any links for suggested further reading?
Best regards,
James Kass
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