Re: Script variants and compatibility equivalence, was: Response to Everson Phoenician and why June 7?

From: Mark E. Shoulson (mark@kli.org)
Date: Mon Jun 07 2004 - 20:22:55 CDT

  • Next message: Mark E. Shoulson: "Re: Revised Phoenician proposal"

    Peter Kirk wrote:

    > On 06/06/2004 14:38, Patrick Durusau wrote:
    >
    >>
    >> In other words, if you ask a Semitic scholar a question about
    >> representation of Phoenician, you are most likely getting an answer
    >> based on a criteria other than the character/glyph model of the
    >> Unicode standard.
    >>
    >> That in no way makes the Semitic scholar's answer wrong, in fact is
    >> it right, for their domain. It has no relevance at all for a proposal
    >> to encode a script based on the Unicode character/glyph model.
    >
    >
    >
    > I agree with you that it is the Semitic scholars' domain to judge
    > whether the Semitic abjads share the same characters or not

    That's not what Patrick said. He said that the Semiticists' analysis is
    correct *for* their domain, i.e. within Semitics, that judgement makes
    sense.

    > I do not mean to imply that the current proposer has not noted "the
    > distinction between the terms character and glyph as defined in this
    > standard." Dr Kaufman is wrong in suggesting that he does not
    > understand glyphs or Unicode. As it seems to me, the proposer has
    > rather rejected the considered opinions of Semitic scholars that the
    > abjads are made up of the same characters, in favour of his own
    > judgment that they are separate abstract characters. This is the
    > judgment that I am questioning, on the authority of your clear
    > statement, Patrick, of the scholarly view that the abjads share the
    > same characters.

    But what about the other people who also agreed? Including a professor
    of the Practice of Biblical Hebrew and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy at
    Harvard? Not to mention other non-Semiticist scholars, whose views also
    count. It isn't just his own view; we've seen that already. Stop
    implying it is; that distorts the facts.

    ~mark



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