Re: [hebrew] Re: Ancient Northwest Semitic Script

From: Elaine Keown (elaine_keown@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Dec 29 2003 - 10:18:35 EST

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             Elaine Keown
             still in Texas

    Hi,

    The core issue in all this is how to apply the Unicode
    character/glyph model to an old 22-letter alphabet
    with (most likely) a 3,700 year history.

    Personalities and sniping aside, that is the central
    issue.

    And I suspect that this 22-letter alphabet should be
    greatly unified, but maybe not 100%.

    In addition, since we are actually talking about
    computers, about optimal software, I would have hoped
    that the real model used for script dis-unification
    and unification would be technical, not historical.

    I would have thought that's obvious----no version of a
    script's history should be the primary evidence for
    making a technical decision.

    And, with Semitics, versions of script history change
    through time and the perception of the scholar. We
    keep digging up new evidence, and everything shifts
    when we do that....

    --- Peter Kirk <peterkirk@qaya.org> wrote:
    > If software companies are ever to provide support
    for > Phoenician etc, it needs to work with the
    encoding
    > which scholars and others actually use

    This is a practical point, but I think the other
    problem is that software companies may assume that the
    Unicode Technical Committee, because of its prestige,
    actually contains Semitists in its membership and is
    (as it frequently professes) in steady contact with
    the user communities.

    Neither of those are true. The UTC has no Semitists,
    and has steadily ignored them---today is certainly the
    same story.

    I will repeat, this time with more exact references,
    what I wrote a while back:

    In the late 1980s, Alan Groves of Westminster
    Theological Seminary, argued with early Unicoders
    about how to represent Hebrew. At that point Prof.
    Groves was one of the world's most prominent
    computational Hebraists--he has since gone on to do
    hermeneutics....

    The early Unicoders ignored him and insulted him.

    And the diacritics that Unicode screwed up, in the
    canonical classes, are those he knew about.

    Are you planning to ignore us again and make another
    serious mistake?

    Maybe this time someone will be watching you, you
    won't make your errors in darkness--Elaine Keown

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