From: Peter Kirk (peter.r.kirk@ntlworld.com)
Date: Fri Jul 25 2003 - 16:37:45 EDT
On 25/07/2003 12:34, Kenneth Whistler wrote:
>Tedd Hopp asked:
>
>
>
>>Tell me if I'm wrong please, but isn't moving characters (however
>>it's disguised) as much of a violation of the stability policy as is
>>changing combining classes of the existing vowels?
>>
>>
>
>You're not wrong. It is a violation of the stability policy.
>
>
And surely so is the proposal to encode separate vowels for biblical
Hebrew, on the basis that the existing Hebrew vowels are in widespread
use for biblical Hebrew. The stability policy guarantees that "*Once a
character is encoded, it will not be moved*".
>What we have currently are:
>
> a. a minor technical problem (that certain sequences of vowel
> points in Biblical Hebrew cannot be reliably distinguished
> in normalized Unicode plain text)
>
>and
>
> b. a minor political problem (that certain communities of Biblical
> scholars are badmouthing Unicode because it "can't fix its
> obvious mistakes")
>
As some kind of self-appointed representative of some of these biblical
scholars, I think I can say that with the right explanation and
encouragement they would find the solution using CGJ acceptable. But a
number of them would never accept any proposal involving different or
incompatible encodings for biblical and modern Hebrew. Also I should say
that I have never myself badmouthed Unicode, though I have encouraged it
to fix its obvious mistakes.
>
>Changing the combining classes of Hebrew points will create:
>
> a. a major technical problem (destabilization of normalization)
>
I am now more aware of this than I was, and so I now prefer the CGJ
option. Sometimes our past mistakes have present consequences such that
the damage caused by trying to correct them is greater than the damage
caused by allowing them to stand.
-- Peter Kirk peter.r.kirk@ntlworld.com http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
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