Guidelines for Handling Unstandardized and Undeciphered Scripts in Unicode
While there exist set processes and procedures for various aspects of the Unicode standard, the domain of adding new scripts to the standard is highly subjectively. There are no set guidelines for determining how to encode unstandardized and undeciphered scripts, which despite their status, have been studied and used for centuries by scholarly communities. This talk will present two scripts – the not-fully-deciphered Proto-Sinaitic and Byblos scripts from the Middle East – and the challenges encountered in developing their Unicode encodings, and possible resolutions. Using these two scripts as case studies, this talk will not only present guidelines for encoding other unstandardized and undeciphered scripts, such as Proto-Elamite, Linear-Elamite, and Indus, but also open the door for further discussion on such encodings.