Re: Old Hebrew, extra Uniscribe work (Re: Arabic encoding model (alas, static!))

From: asadek@st-elias.com
Date: Thu Jul 07 2005 - 14:26:22 CDT

  • Next message: Jony Rosenne: "RE: Old Hebrew, extra Uniscribe work (Re: Arabic encoding model (alas, static!))"

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "John Hudson" <tiro@tiro.com>

    > Regarding additions to Uniscribe for Phoenician, I really don't
    > think anyone needs to worry about this. Peter has indicated, quite
    > simply, that MS doesn't implement or make announcements about
    > things that are not formally part of Unicode yet. And very wise
    > they are too. But I don't think there is any reason to doubt that
    > Phoenician support will be implemented since, ironically, it can be
    > built on top of the Hebrew shaping engine relatively easily (as was
    > Thaana support).
    >

    This easy implementation is possible, but

    1) Supporting any script costs money: committee meeting time,
    chart production time, development time, testing time,
    deployment time. There is no free lunch. I doubt the Phoenician
    market is worth this.

    2) Before Windows comes out with Phoenician support, years
    will have passed and people will have used another perfectly
    defensible solution: Hebrew. Will people really then feel they
    should convert to the Phoenician block? Why even propose
    this alternative which could disunify what works well today?

    3) For Thaana (I'm learning new things every day on this list!)
    there is a real requirement: a living community whose script
    cannot be construed as being part of a Semitic continuum.
    We come back to Phoenician is but Old Hebrew in its
    appearance and sometimes its linguistic content, such texts
    can be found. While no Old Thaana text may linguistically
    be confused with a Phoenician text, Maldivian was never
    confusable with the Phoenician language and Thaana has
    apparently inherited some of its letter shapes from Divehi
    Hakura, a Sinhalese-like script [Backwell encyclopedia of
    Writing systems]). Thus a living community and a real need
    with no valid Unicode alternative. Here the effort -- even
    minimal as it was by some companies -- may have been justified
    I would say (yes, I know I should not voice any opinion
    on what makes economical sense or that some companies
    may look at their bottom line).

    Ashraf Sadek



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