From: Doug Ewell (dewell@adelphia.net)
Date: Fri Nov 18 2005 - 08:59:22 CST
Andreas Prilop <nhtcapri at rrzn dash user dot uni dash hannover dot de>
wrote:
>> ISO 15924 isn't an academic exercise. There were
>> specific bibliographical reasons for giving codes
>> to Latf and Latg. Specifically, a book of
>> Schiller's poetry might be published in Fraktur
>> orthography or in Roman orthography, or a book by
>> Ó Criomhthain might be published in Gaelic
>> orthography or in Roman orthography.
>>
>> Are Kufi or Nastaliq are distinguished in a similar fashion?
>
> Indeed they are! Persian and Urdu are usually printed in
> Nastaliq, which can be compared to print in Fraktur or Gaelic.
> Persian and Urdu /may/ be printed in Naskh - especially
> when printing in Nastaliq causes problems.
> On the other hand, Arabic is never printed in Nastaliq, afaik.
This wasn't Michael's question. He asked whether Naskh and Nastaliq
were distinguished by having different *orthographies* -- that is,
whether certain words are actually spelled differently when written in
these Arabic-script variants, not merely whether the letterforms look
different.
> I think it would be useful to be able to specify different
> Arabic scripts like "Simplified" and "Traditional" for Chinese.
If there are no orthographic distinctions, you have to ask whether the
real use in this would be to distinguish visual styles, and if so, how
this would differ from having separate script codes for Latin in
italics, Latin in bold, Latin in cursive, Latin in legal-style BLOCK
CAPITALS, etc.
> Follow the links "Further reading" at
> http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/urdu-alphabet.html
> to learn more.
I'll see if I can get to these.
There would probably have to be either an orthographic difference of
some sort (certain words are spelled differently) or a genuine literacy
threshold (a noticeable percentage of readers of one variant are unable
to read the other) in order to consider this a separate script.
-- Doug Ewell Fullerton, California, USA http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
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