From: Dean Snyder (dean.snyder@jhu.edu)
Date: Mon Feb 28 2005 - 19:13:44 CST
UList@dfa-mail.com wrote at 11:25 AM on Monday, February 28, 2005:
>Any attempt to forceably and artificial standardize a complex ancient script
>continuum like cuneiform, for example, destroys much of the purpose of
>encoding in the first place (academic study of the variants themselves).
By wise thinking, the encoding threshold in Unicode stops short of
paleography; if it did not we would have to encode hundreds of cuneiform
paleographical variation sets ALONG WITH the hundreds and thousands of
other paleographical variation sets associated with the rest of the
world's scripts. Besides, NO ONE can do paleography using computer fonts;
paleography, almost by definition, requires original texts or their
facsimiles.
>At
>the harshest critique, using an artificially standardized script on a highly
>divergent sample -- rather than simply transliterating -- approaches the
>kitsch of using an "ancient look" font to set the mood.
The effort to encode cuneiform had nothing to do with the "the kitsch of
using an 'ancient look' font to set the mood"; it had everything to do
with enabling cuneiform text processing and interchange in mixed script
systems text.
Respectfully,
Dean A. Snyder
Assistant Research Scholar
Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project
Computer Science Department
Whiting School of Engineering
218C New Engineering Building
3400 North Charles Street
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218
office: 410 516-6850
cell: 717 817-4897
www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi/
http://users.adelphia.net/~deansnyder/
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