Re: Aramaic unification and information retrieval

From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Mon Dec 22 2003 - 07:48:31 EST

  • Next message: Jony Rosenne: "Road Map (was: Aramaic unification and information retrieval)"

    At 04:27 -0800 2003-12-22, Peter Kirk wrote:

    >In view of this, I call for a review of the roadmaps and in
    >particular of the status of the Aramaic, Palmyrene, Nabataean,
    >Elymaic and Hatran scripts.

    We heard you the last time, Peter. We know that this is a concern of yours.

    >Serious consideration should be given to unifying these scripts with
    >the Hebrew script, of which they appear to be glyph variants.

    To you.

    >The separate status of Phoenician may also need to be reconsidered.

    Absolutely not. Phoenician is the mother of these scripts and Greek
    and Old Italic besides. Greek and Old Italic did *not* descend from
    "Hebrew", and it is pernicious to go on suggesting that Phoenician
    should be unified with Hebrew. If you want, as some scholars do, to
    write Phoenician in Hebrew script, go right ahead. That is a
    perfectly reasonable transliteration choice. Nothing prevents you
    from doing it. But historical realities and relationships *do* have
    some relation to the content of the Unicode Standard and ISO/IEC
    10646. And that may include encoding things that you won't use,
    though *others* might.

    >Note that I am calling for a review only of scripts listed in N2311
    >as not in current use.

    Please do not force us to undertake this review NOW. We do not have
    the resources to do so effectively and already this thread has taken
    up far too much time and energy. We have explained to you that
    nothing actionable is happening with any of this material at present.
    How many times do I have to say that?

    -- 
    Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com
    


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