From: Hosszu Gabor (hosszu@nimrud.eet.bme.hu)
Date: Fri Oct 31 2008 - 05:09:16 CST
Dear Colleagues,
On Fri, 31 Oct 2008, Jo dm wrote:
> Old Hungarian was never written in boustrophedon.
This is not true; there are examples of this direction in the proposal of
the Community of the Hungarian Rovas Writers
(http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3527.pdf, see Fig. 14.10-12).
Another example is the "Bologna stick calendar" (see Fig.
14.4-1/a,b,c,d,e,f and 14.4-2). The copy of the original stick calendar
remained, but Sndor Forrai (he was one of the most acknowledged Rovas
researchers) proved that this stick calendar was originally scratched into
the four sides of the stick in boustrophedon. See Sndor Forrai: Sndor
Forrai: Az si magyar rovsrs az kortl napjainkig, published by the
Antolgia Kiad, Lakitelek, 1994 ("The Old Szekler-Hungarian Rovas Writing
from the Ancient Time to Nowadays") ISBN 963-790- 830-7. This is in
Hungarian, but on the page 145 you can see on Fig. 67 (in Forrai.s book)
where Sndor Forrai described the reconstructed boustrophedon direction of
the script of this relic. Nowadays some Hungarian Rovas carver already
made the stick calendar again using naturally the boustrophedon
directionality.
> It is also worth to be clarified that there was no prior character set
> encoded for Old Hungarian; Gbor Hossz regularly refers to his home
Do not mix the "font" and the "character set". The basic of the character
set was developed by the Runic Writing Section of the Society of the
Friends of the Old Hungarian Culture, mainly by Gyz Libisch in the 1980s
(see Fig. 14.10-9 in the proposal N3527). In 1995 I accepted this
character set. We (with Gyz Libisch, the secretary of the above
association) extended this character set with the bug symbols, historical
ligatures, Rovas numerals and Rovas separator symbol). So it was not my
"home character set". This was called "Rovs Szabvny" (=Rovas Standard in
Hungarian). I encoded this character set using an 8-bit encoding in 1995
and I made the appropriate True Type fonts. This "Rovas Szabvany" became a
de facto standard from 1995.
We never asked Michael Everson to make standard for the Szekler-Hungarian
Rovas. However, in July of 2008 Michael Everson asked me to organize a
meeting in Budapest for the Hungarian Rovas writers. I did so. But after
this meeting it become clear for us that Everson-Szelp's proposal is based
on some relics from the Middle Ages and some extensions for the
"revivalists". I refer to the original proposal of Michael Everson and
Andre Szabolcs Szelp (http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3483.pdf,
2008-08-03). In this proposal there are a lot of sharp political (!)
related statements and a strong degrading approach to the "revivalists".
When in end of July 2008 the Community of the Hungarian Rovas Writers were
formed (as a wide internet-based working group) M. Everson and A. Sz.
Szelp modified the text of their proposal, however, they did not change
their view. Especially dm Jo supports the Everson-Szelp proposal.
Our view is basically different: our statement is that the
Szekler-Hungarian Rovas never became extinct, it was continuously used. It
was under development during the whole history. That is the reason why the
sources of our proposal are based on a wider range of relics and practice
from the historical time to nowadays.
The core of our proposal, the "Rovs Szabvny" was accepted and supported
(based on voting) by the World Congress of the World Federation of the
Hungarians (August 20th, 2008).
The N3527 proposal (including the whole character set of the "Rovs
Szabvny") was accepted and supported (based on voting) by the "Alive
Rovas" Symposium in October 4th, 2008.
Best Regards
Gbor
Dr. Gabor Hosszu, Ph.D., Assoc. Prof.
Dept. of Electron Devices, BME
http://nimrud.eet.bme.hu/hosszu
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