Re: Standaridized variation sequences for the Desert alphabet?

On 3/26/2017 9:23 AM, Michael Everson wrote:
> On 26 Mar 2017, at 17:02, Asmus Freytag <asmusf_at_ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>> On 3/26/2017 6:18 AM, Michael Everson wrote:
>>
>>> In any case it’s not a disunification. Some characters are encoded; they were used to write diphthongs in 1855. These characters were abandoned by 1859, and other characters were devised.
>> Calling them "characters" is pre-judging the issue, don't you think?
> No, I don’t think so.

I really think it is.
>
>> We know that these are different shapes, but that they stand for the same text elements.
> No, they don’t. Those diphthongs can also be represented in other ways in Deseret.

Having alternative ways to represent these doesn't invalidate or affect
my argument.
>
> I’ve never accepted the view that “everything is already encoded and everything new is a disunification” which seems to be a pretty common view.

I would not say I aspire to the view you quote.

If you encode a certain shape, it may get used for a range of text
elements. This would (de facto) encode these text elements via that
shape. If it is later felt that the given shape should not be used for
the full range of text elements, then you could say that the "implicit"
unification based on the usage (or, if you will, "fallback usage") was
mistaken and should be better handled by two (or more) shapes. This
represents a "de-facto" disunification.

However, where I part from your description is the "everything is
already encoded". That would not be the case anywhere a range of text
elements cannot be represented at all. Your statement also implies a
"correctly encoded" or "successfully encoded" which is different from
"there's an encoding that some people use as a fallback", which, if
disunification should prove proper later on, would be a better way of
describing what was the original situation.

Perhaps the point is subtle, but it is important.

In the current case, you have the opposite, to wit, the text elements
are unchanged, but you would like to add alternate code elements to
represent what are, ultimately, the same text elements. That's not
disunification, but dual encoding.

A./
Received on Sun Mar 26 2017 - 16:30:20 CDT