Re: Unicode 5.0 decompositions of Balinese vowel signs with tedung

From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Fri Apr 14 2006 - 13:42:00 CST

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    Thanks a lot for your clarifications about the current status of "missing" scripts in Unicode5.0 beta2.
    Dueto the number ofscripts and characters still in Stage 6 waiting for decision in FDAM at ISO, I think that there will soon be a Unicode 5.1 update to reflect the pending changes at ISO, still not considered for Unicode 5.

    I'm sure that Africans are waiting for fast approval of Vai, and that the pending brahmic scripts that are nearly complete (Lepcha, Ol chiki, Saurashtra) or that may be completed soon because they are well known (e.g. Meitei/Manipuri), as well as the Avestic (Pahlavi) abjad will be welcomed for lots of people.

    The Viet-Thai, Newari, North-Arabic, South-Arabic, Old Hungarian, Aramaic and Uighur scripts should also merit more attention (with more formal proposals).

    Tengwar, Cirth and Blissymbols (in the SMP) are also wellknown, fully described in litterature and used by a rather large and growing number of people interested on them (there are even educational documents and various organisations using them to transcribe lots of languages). Even though they have many known local variants, the core set is common andknown by all those communities. They are recent inventions compared to other scripts, but they have significant use in modern and are far from being confidential.

    I'd say the same for the Mandombe (Negro-African) semi-syllabary (but I don't know how you have named it in the English roadmap, or if it has been roadmapped). Although it is tought in schools in RDC, Congo and other countries, it is protected by a 1980 patent, confirmed by at least one government, and I'm not sure it is now in public domain or usable without paying a licence to its supporting association. Its graphical design is very unusual, with complex geometric shapes that form ligatures difficult to analyze and recognize without excellent training.



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