Re: Script Continuums (Was: Re: Greek glyphs)

From: UList@dfa-mail.com
Date: Tue Mar 01 2005 - 19:56:02 CST

  • Next message: Theodore H. Smith: "Normalisation data file?"

    > 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.

    I believe I have demonstrated that it can, very reasonably, be done at least
    for some script continuums.

    In fact I will be doing it -- whether you like it or not -- with archaic
    Greek, simply by using multiple fonts.

    It would be more convenient if I could store those multiple sets of glyphs in
    one font, and access them from a Web page somehow.

    > Besides, NO ONE can do paleography using computer fonts;
    > paleography, almost by definition, requires original texts or their
    > facsimiles.

    Then

    > it had everything to do
    > with enabling cuneiform text processing and interchange in mixed script
    > systems text.

    Which of course means you could just use Latin transliteration, except when
    you need to discuss a photograph of some noteworthy sample. As your field has,
    I believe, always previously done.

    I have absolutely no intention of forcing you to use any more-complicated
    system than you wish for cuneiform. In fact there are Greek scholars who
    insist on transliteration of the epichoric alphabets to standard Greek script.
    One very important quality of the multiple font set, or a properly designed
    "variation" system -- rather than the PUA -- is that I can encode a document
    in the standard Greek codepoints, and users can, by their font choice, still
    receive the standard(ized) script if they wish.

    You, and perhaps every single other user of Sumeric cuneiform, may choose to
    deal only in one standardized script. This may or may not be ideal for some
    divergent documents. I will leave it to the individual workers in cuneiform to
    determine how they wish to deal with this subject in their own studies.

    I find it highly odd -- and unacceptable -- for you to actually (if you read
    the words you wrote) forbid Greek users from displaying anything but standard
    Greek script in HTML.

    Doug



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