Re: Back to Coptic (was: Demystifying the Politburo)

From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Fri Jul 08 2005 - 11:47:42 CDT

  • Next message: John Hudson: "Re: Back to Coptic"

    At 11:13 -0500 2005-07-08, asadek@st-elias.com wrote:

    > > You are inconsistent here. You thanked me for disunifying COPTIC
    >> LETTER KHI from GREEK LETTER CHI, and for disunifying COPTIC LETTER
    >> RO from GREEK LETTER RHO.
    >
    >But it does not matter, the KHI-RO symbol is universal and not part of the
    >Greek block (it shares all the same attributes even its name and meaning
    >in Latin, Greek, Coptic,etc.)

    You are wrong. If KHI is not CHI and if RO is not RHO, then a symbol
    made of a ligated KHI RO is not the same as a symbol made of a
    ligated CHI RO. In Latin, by the way, it is a not a ligature of P and
    X; it is the ligated Greek letters which are occasionally used in
    Latin.

    > > Previously, people argued that they
    > > shared the same meaning, the same appearance, the same name, the
    > > same typographical behaviour and the same origin. It took many
    > > years of struggle to get the committees to accept the
    > > disunification. In point of fact, CHI RHO and COPTIC SYMBOL KHI RO
    > > don't share the same appearance, which is one of the factors behing
    > > the disunification in the first place.
    >
    >You mean: they often don't have the same appareance, as most glyph
    >variants would. How many slightly different universal CHI RO glyph variants
    >do you want me to find? How many glyphs variants of any symbols?

    You were not listening.

    Previously, people argued that Coptic SIMA and Greek SIGMA shared the
    same meaning, the same appearance, the same name, the same
    typographical behaviour and the same origin. It took many years of
    struggle to get the committees to accept the disunification.

    Coptic and Greek letters were disunified. This Coptic symbol was
    disunified from the Greek symbol. That was a choice made for
    consistency, precisely because this and several other symbols occur
    frequently in Coptic ecclesiastical printing.

    >One must not be carried away by the Greek/Coptic disunification of what was
    >not even in the Greek block!

    For Coptic we encoded what would be needed to represent Coptic. We
    did not consider it appropriate to overload the Letterlike Symbol
    with Coptic properties.

    >But I understand that the harm is done and this mistake cannot be corrected,
    >it is unfortunate: two similar KHI-RO signs to refer to exactly the
    >same thing.

    No, one refers to a ligature of two Greek letters, and one refers to
    a ligature of two Coptic letters.

    >As far as the Lord abbreviation is concerned, I tend to agree with Mr. John
    >Hudson: the glyph shown in the chart is a rare glyph variant of the standard
    >abbreviation which has a bar. There is no reason to force people to always
    >add a bar (nothing is gained except extra labour and making searching,
    >sorting for such a symbol more complicated as it could be represented
    >without any semantic gain in two different fashions). Changing the reference
    >glyph in the charts to add a bar would avoid this risk. No one will then be
    >tempted to add an extraneous bar whatever your "model".

    Accepting this suggestion would introduce ambiguity in the
    representation of Coptic text.

    >I hope that at least on this topic we may reach a consensus and
    >correct a glyph error in the charts otherwise I fear people will be
    >encoding in various ways the exact same symbol (as you said yourself
    >it may represent a string of forms).

    There is no glyph error in the chart.

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


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