Philippe Verdy posted:
Without such use, let some freedom to scholars, as their mutual
agreements (and the fact that they are the only authorities for that
language) is perfectly valid (Unicode prohibitions should only concern
the case where it creates interoperability problems, but PUA will cause much more problems than a use of an approximate mapping to Unicode
characters whose semantics best match the character to represent).
Indeed.
Long before Unicode it has been convention for the Old English letter _ƿ_ (U+01BF LATIN LETTER WYNN) to be represented by _w_ in most editions of Old English texts and in dictionaries of Old English.
Perhaps this was originally a kludge, but it is so common that printing of wynn in extended text would probably be seen today by many as a pedantic affection.
For Middle English texts it is customerary for various squiggles and signs used as abbrevations to be expanded into the modern letters which they represent but to be printed in italics to indicate they are expansions. Those who know the abbreviation symbols can therefore recreate in their minds the original text.
There was discussion on this list earlier about Cakchiquel letters. Peter Constable produced on the SIL site a page indicating the way in which scholars have represented these letters substituting characters more easily available. See http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=RecentCuatrilloUse.
William Overington suggested at http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2003-m03/0514.html that the PUA should be used to encode them in standardized positions.
David Starner gave a rebuttal at http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2003-m03/0515.html, preferring substitution of characters currently available in Unicode.
It is not unusual in books or articles containing quotes from older linguistic practise that a passage will be produced with remarks that special characters have been replaced by corresponding characters more familiar in modern use.
Scholars do such things, and will continue to them. Even if the proper characters are available in Unicode editors may wish to substitute more familiar variations for ease of readibility.
Jim Allan
