Re: Transliterating ancient scripts [was: ASCII and Unicode lifespan]

From: Dean Snyder (dean.snyder@jhu.edu)
Date: Mon May 23 2005 - 16:37:33 CDT

  • Next message: Tom Emerson: "Re: Transliterating ancient scripts [was: ASCII and Unicode lifespan]"

    Gregg Reynolds wrote at 4:23 PM on Monday, May 23, 2005:

    >Dean Snyder wrote:
    >> Buckwalter's transliteration of Arabic <http://www.qamus.org/
    >> transliteration.htm> is, as are all transliterations, lossy. You cannot
    >> tell, for example, from this transliteration that Arabic r & z are
    >> differentiated only by a tiny dot. THAT is pertinent information in many
    >> contexts.
    >
    >Huh? Latin "r" denotes the Arabic letter called ??? and Latin "z"
    >denotes the letter called ???; where's the confusion?

    Latin r in no way resembles Latin z; Arabic "r" & "z" are exactly alike
    except for the tiny dot above "z".

    >Can you tell that difference from the integers x0631 and x0632?

    You can when they're rendered; and I have been talking all along about
    loss of GLYPHIC correspondences in transliterations.

    Respectfully,

    Dean A. Snyder

    Assistant Research Scholar
    Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project
    Computer Science Department
    Whiting School of Engineering
    218C New Engineering Building
    3400 North Charles Street
    Johns Hopkins University
    Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218

    office: 410 516-6850
    cell: 717 817-4897
    www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi/
    http://users.adelphia.net/~deansnyder/



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