Re: Mende Kikakui Number 10

From: Michael Everson <everson_at_evertype.com>
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2016 01:47:11 +0100

On 10 Jun 2016, at 23:34, Ken Whistler <kenwhistler_at_att.net> wrote:
> On 6/10/2016 3:23 PM, Michael Everson wrote:
>> Mende Kikakui has no ZERO. This is a fault, and they would do well to devise one. An oval with a line through it like Ø would do. But they don’t have this.
>
> I concur with that. If the users of this system decide that they want to have a decimal radix system instead of the system documented with the combining marks for decimal ranks, then adding a zero at 1E8C6 would be feasible. That's why we left a gap at that point in the chart.

Indeed!

>> MENDE KIKAKUI SYLLABLE PU is the appropriate character to use for a non-decimal 10. The dot or not-dot or the length of the bar is not relevant; I understand that both occur for both entities. Do we have other LETTER characters which are disunified from NUMBER (as opposed to DIGIT) characters? If so, then consistency might be a reason to disunify them.
>
> I disagree about that. There is no reason to depart from the logic of the system for this one value. Add one ligature glyph to your font for the sequence for 10, and you're done.

You’re right about that. I hadn’t considered the ligature being structurally appropriate for this usage. (It would have been more obvious if Andrew had given the character names alongside the code positions; I hadn’t looked it up yet.)

Michael
Received on Fri Jun 10 2016 - 19:47:33 CDT

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