From: James Kass (jameskass@att.net)
Date: Mon May 24 2004 - 08:09:51 CDT
Peter Kirk wrote,
(on the use of transliteration fonts)
> OK. And you agree that this is a proper thing to do, and that it should
> not be considered a "cavalierly" and "antiquarian" action, "a throwback
> to the past century"?
Well, I don't think it would be cavalier in any sense to use a
transliteration font. Hardly antiquarian or throwback, either.
But, I don't for a minute think it's the proper thing to do.
I think it would be silly and churlish. How fortunate that
those who wish to do so aren't bound by my opinions, eh?
See, those favoring the Phoenician proposal (as I see it) are
trying to serve everyone. It's a Universal character set, after
all.
Those opposed, who may think the supporters are silly and churlish
(or worse), want to bind us by *their* opinions, don't they? I don't
see this as "serving everybody", rather it strikes me as being
basically self-serving.
> >(English is slippery. Whether the use of "cavalierly" above
> >should be interpreted as 'like a gentleman' or 'with arrogance'
> >would be a matter of opinion.)
>
>Ah, well, Unicode has some great cavaliers!
It takes all kinds, as they say!
> Of course. And the point of Unicode is to move away from this situation
> of multiple encodings for the same script, ...
And we get back to the gist. Is it a separate script? Would it be
fair to ask for documentation that the ancient Phoenicians who used
the script considered it to be a variant of modern Hebrew? (No, it's
not a fair question at all. But, I think it's an appropriate question.)
Also, I'm having trouble understanding why Semitic scholars wouldn't
relish the ability to display modern and palaeo-Hebrew side-by-side
in the same plain text document. And, even if *all* Semitic scholars aren't
jumping at the chance, why the heck would they want to prevent it?
Best regards,
James Kass
> On 22/05/2004 16:49, James Kass wrote:
>
> >Peter Kirk wrote,
> >
> >
> >
> >>As I understand it, what at least a number of Semitic scholars want to
> >>do is not to transliterate, but to represent Phoenician texts with
> >>Phoenician letters with the Unicode Hebrew characters, and fonts with
> >>Phoenician glyphs at the Hebrew character code points. In other words,
> >>to treat the difference between Hebrew and Phoenician as a font change,
> >>like the difference between Fraktur and normal Latin script. Will they
> >>be allowed to do that after a Phoenician block is defined, or will they
> >>not?
> >>
> >>
> >
> >They'd simply use what's been called a "transliteration font" for this
> >purpose.
> >
> >In order to effect the change, they'd probably have to "click" a
> >"button" or two. Indeed, if they wanted to transliterate *and*
> >"trans-code", they'd have to click a button or two, too.
> >
> >In other words, the end-user's burden for either approach would
> >be about the same, a couple of clicks.
> >
> >>From a programming point of view, it's about as easy to re-map
> >an existing font for masquerade/transliteration purposes as it is
> >to write a character set conversion routine.
> >
> >Once again, for the end-user, the trouble involved should be about
> >the same. In one case they install a font (font program), in the
> >other case they install a character set conversion program.
> >
> >
> >
> OK. And you agree that this is a proper thing to do, and that it should
> not be considered a "cavalierly" and "antiquarian" action, "a throwback
> to the past century"?
>
> > ...
> >
> >(English is slippery. Whether the use of "cavalierly" above
> >should be interpreted as 'like a gentleman' or 'with arrogance'
> >would be a matter of opinion.)
> >
> >
> >
> Ah, well, Unicode has some great cavaliers!
>
> >>If a few people encode a significant number of texts according to their
> >>preferences, this implies a corpus in mixed encodings, which is what I
> >>am trying to avoid.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >As others have pointed out, the very situation you wish to avoid
> >already exists. Some work is transliterated into Latin, some into
> >Hebrew. It wouldn't surprise if Greek and Cyrillic transliteration
> >wasn't practiced, as well. Also, there are conflicting code pages
> >for Hebrew still in use, apparently.
> >
> >
>
> Of course. And the point of Unicode is to move away from this situation
> of multiple encodings for the same script, by providing a single defined
> encoding for each one and properly defined conversion paths from legacy
> encodings. With Unicode, there will be no need to continue to encode
> Phoenician or Hebrew with 8-bit masquerading fonts and visual ordering
> (and yes, Michael, such things are a big problem and I agree that we
> should try to eradicate them), and it will be possible to convert texts
> to proper Unicode encoding. But if there are two competing Unicode
> encodings for the same text, and no defined mappings between them (as
> both compatibility equivalence and interleaved collation seem to have
> been ruled out), the advantages of going to Unicode are lost.
>
> >Either way things end up, the end-user just has to click a
> >couple of buttons. Where's the problem?
> >
> >
>
> Well, it's a lot more complex than this for searches, that's where the
> basic problem will be. Plus people don't particularly like being
> labelled "cavalierly" and "antiquarian", when in fact it is the
> "cavalierly" (proposed) actions of Unicode which are ignoring what they
> want to continue to do.
>
> On 22/05/2004 16:20, Michael Everson wrote:
>
> > At 15:47 -0700 2004-05-22, Peter Kirk wrote:
> >
> >> As I understand it, what at least a number of Semitic scholars want
> >> to do is not to transliterate, but to represent Phoenician texts with
> >> Phoenician letters with the Unicode Hebrew characters, and fonts with
> >> Phoenician glyphs at the Hebrew character code points. In other
> >> words, to treat the difference between Hebrew and Phoenician as a
> >> font change, like the difference between Fraktur and normal Latin
> >> script.
> >
> >
> > More hearsay! Who has offered any evidence of this? No one. ...
>
>
> Well, Dean Snyder has been saying for some time that he wants the
> difference between Hebrew and Phoenician to be a font change, and it is
> certainly what Dr Kaufman has in mind. If you don't accept evidence from
> top scholars in this field, whose evidence will you accept?
>
> And if you want evidence of use of corresponding glyph to code point
> mappings for Phoenician/palaeo-Hebrew and square Hebrew fonts, looks at
> the following:
>
> http://members.tripod.com/~ebionite/fonts.htm: palaeo-Hebrew mapped as
> "Web Hebrew", which is basically ISO 8859-8 visual.
>
> http://www.historian.net/files.htm: set of various Semitic fonts
> including Phoenician with the same mappings.
>
> http://www.linguistssoftware.com/archaic.htm.
>
> etc.
>
> > ...
> >
> >> Will they be allowed to do that after a Phoenician block is defined,
> >> or will they not? If the answer is that they will not, this justifies
> >> the objection that a new Phoenician block interferes with the work of
> >> the real experts in the field, in order to meet the not very clearly
> >> defined requirements of a few non-experts.
> >
> >
> > I consider this to be a theoretical construct on your part. Most
> > Semiticists use Square Hebrew because they read Hebrew. I don't
> > believe they are making Phoenican fonts to view the Phoenician data in
> > their databases. They are just writing the stuff with Hebrew letters.
> > I have yet to see a Phoenician font of the kind that you posit here.
>
>
> I listed a number of Phoenician/palaeo-Hebrew fonts above, and there are
> several others. They are not Unicode-based, but many of them are based
> on masquerading of encodings originally defined for Hebrew.
>
> There also seems to be a sub-culture of people who like to read the
> Hebrew Bible with palaeo-Hebrew glyphs, see e.g.
> http://www.crowndiamond.org/cd/torah.html (yes, these people are
> currently using an 8-bit visual order encoding). I'm not sure why they
> do this, but their needs deserve to be considered.
>
> >
> > And Dean's suggestion that "most people use Hebrew and Phoenician
> > alike in ASCII clones" is not worth consideration as a reason to
> > "unify" Hebrew and Phoenician.
>
>
> Why not?
>
> >
> >> If a few people encode a significant number of texts according to
> >> their preferences, this implies a corpus in mixed encodings, which is
> >> what I am trying to avoid.
> >
> >
> > FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME, Anyone working in the field is going to have
> > to deal with the corpus being available for searching in LATIN
> > transliteration ANYWAY.
>
>
> And FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME, this is what we all want to move away from
> and this is why Unicode was defined.
>
> On 22/05/2004 19:41, Mark E. Shoulson wrote:
>
> > Peter Kirk wrote:
> >
> >> The fear is rather that a few people, who are not true Semitic
> >> scholars, will embrace the new range, and by doing so will make
> >> things much harder for the majority who don't need and don't want the
> >> new encoding. One of the original purposes of Unicode was to move
> >> away from the old situation in which many different incompatible
> >> encodings were used for the same language and script. We don't want
> >> to get back into that situation.
> >
> >
> > That's awfully elitist, isn't it? "Some *non*-scholars want it (if
> > they'll embrace it, it follows that they'd want it if offered), but we
> > can't be swayed by the desires of the hoi polloi." Non-scholars get
> > to use Unicode too, and have a right to influence what gets in it.
> > Just because the userbase isn't the people you thought it would be
> > doesn't mean they don't count.
>
>
> My intention here is not elitist but democratic, to consider the
> requirements of the majority of people who actually use the scripts in
> question. Hoi polloi (Greek: the majority) don't actually use Phoenician
> script. Semitic scholars do. A rather small number of other people do. I
> am suggesting that we look for the views of the majority of those who
> actually use the script. And of the views expressed on this list by
> actual users, or reported here with specific names and details, I see a
> majority for unifying Phoenician with Hebrew. In fact I think only two
> actual users have favoured non-unification, Deborah Anderson and George
> Khalaf, plus Michael if he is really a user himself. But several users,
> Semitic scholars, have favoured unification.
>
> >
> > ...
> >
> > I don't think the "majority vs. one or two malcontents" picture that
> > you're drawing here is even vaguely reminiscent of reality.
>
>
> I don't claim an overwhelming majority. But even if it is only four to
> three, that is still a majority.
>
> On 22/05/2004 21:02, Curtis Clark wrote:
>
> > It's hard for me to believe that the world community of Semitic
> > scholars is so small or monolithic that there aren't differences of
> > opinion among them. I have been almost automatically suspicious of the
> > posts by the Semiticists opposed to encoding Phoenician; after
> > thirty-four years in academia (longer if I count that my father was a
> > professor when I was a youth), I have yet to see a field in which
> > there were not differences of opinion. Admittedly, all Semiticists
> > might agree on the nature of Phoenician (just as all chemists accept
> > the periodic table), but the fervor exhibited here makes me wonder
> > what the issues *really* are. I am used to seeing such fervor among
> > academics only when there has been some unstated agenda at work. And
> > so I wonder, are we in this list reading only one side of an internal
> > squabble among Semiticists?
> >
> If so, please give us some evidence for another side. But maybe it is
> something else. For example, if you read evolutionary biologists
> strongly defending Darwinian evolution against creationist theories,
> does that imply an internal squabble among evoutionary biologists and
> therefore that some support creationism? Or does it rather imply a
> closing of ranks against outsiders who are attacking their discipline, a
> defence against (what they perceive as) unscientific attacks from those
> who don't know what they are talking about?
>
> On 23/05/2004 09:14, saqqara wrote:
>
> >Elaine, it would be interesting to read Prof. Kaufman's opinion of why
> >Phoenician should not be regarded as a distinct script (family). Can he be
> >persuaded to publish his reasoning for UTC to consider?
> >
> >
>
> See https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2004-May/012945.html.
> See also
> http://www.nelc.ucla.edu/Faculty/Schniedewind_files/NWSemitic/Aramaic_ABD.pdf
> for an article on Aramaic by Kaufman.
>
> >However despite the discussion of current techniques and preferences among
> >scholars, the ONLY question here is whether 'Phoenician' counts as a
> >distinct script as far as Unicode principles are concerned. If the proposal
> >on the table is accurate and silence seems to imply it is
> >
> >
>
> Silence?? Is that what you call 1000 or so objections and
> counter-objections on this list? There is no point in objecting to the
> details of a proposal if the principle of it is not acceptable.
>
> >If it does and is then standardise it as such and we can move on to the far
> >more interesting and challenging question of how better to use computers to
> >work with multilingual texts and source materials in ancient scripts and
> >languages.
> >
> >For Unicode, implementation of Phoenician as a font switch for Hebrew as an
> >alternative proposal fails at the first hurdle if, as is claimed by some
> >here, modern Hebrew readers do not regard Phoenician fonts as valid Hebrew
> >fonts (in the sense that an English/Latin reader would acknowledge older
> >cursive and type styles as valid and readable, if sometimes odd and
> >unfamiliar). At least thats how I read the arguments about unification. So
> >this is an important issue to address in a counter-proposal, although not
> >the only one.
> >
> >
>
> This is indeed a good argument, much better than the argument that two
> or three users support the proposal. The counter-argument is that in
> other cases (such as Suetterlin) lack of legibility is not considered a
> clear criterion for separate encoding of a script, when the illegible
> form is part of a script continuum.
>
> A lot more than two or three people wanted Klingon to be encoded, but it
> wasn't because actual use as a separate script could not be
> demonstrated. Surely the same is true of Phoenician.
>
> On 23/05/2004 10:54, Philippe Verdy wrote:
>
> > ...
> >
> >My opinion here is that Phoenician would unify more easily with Greek or Coptic
> >than with Hebrew... What is unique in Phoenician is that it has a weak
> >directionality (can be written in either direction, although RTL is probably
> >more common and corresponds to the most important sources of usage in old
> sacred
> >texts from which semitic script familiess for Aramaic or Early Hebrew have
> >genetic relations).
> >
> >
> >
> Do you have any evidence for this? Are there actual Phoenician
> inscriptions in LTR or boustrophedon? I understood that such things
> started when the Greeks borrowed the Canaanite alphabet and started
> playing around with it.
>
> Unfication with Coptic is of course ridiculous, because Coptic is
> derived from much later Greek, plus a few Demotic letters. Unification
> with Greek, or for that matter Coptic, is anyway impossible because
> these scripts are already defined as strong LTR, and Phoenician is
> certainly not that.
>
> --
> Peter Kirk
> peter@qaya.org (personal)
> peterkirk@qaya.org (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/
>
>
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