I think the point is being missed here (I changed the subject to tryto bring some focus on the subthread).
John was not necessarily stating HIS opinions, he was answering the question of what basis people would work on if they wanted to be dismissive of imaginary scripts. You are trying to "convince" the wrong person here. <KLINGON_DISCUSSION> Let's digress and talk about Klingon for a moment (I promise I can show relevance). The fact does indeed remain that there were many people who watched "Trekkies" (cf: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0120370) and who, if they found that Klingon was "under investigation" that there was a crowd of people supporting rubber head covers and such. Dr. Marc Orkand is certainly a serious linguist and many people supported the notion of encoding Klingon, but the fact remains that it was a very huge source of embarrassment for Unicode among people who look at "Trekkies" a bit oddly. Klingon carries a certain connotation that not everyone who is doing serious work could have felt comfortable with, even if the script issues did not exist. </KLINGON_DISCUSSION> The fact is that "Elvish" carries a certain connotation (cf: http://dictionary.com/search?q=Elvish), several dictionaries have definitions such as: American Heritage Dict. - Prankish; mischievous. Webster's Revised Unabridged - Mysterious; also, foolish. This connotation is REAL. To pretend that anyone who looks at it this way is foolish is to be just as dismissive of people as they are being of these scripts. We could argue the scholarly value from here to eternity but the three points John tried to make add up to a perception that some people *will* feel -- it behooves the UTC to consider holding off on actions until they are ready to have the people leave the room who you may consider "bitter" for their unimaginative thoughts.... encoding these scripts may be big news in Middle Earth but it might prove to be the road to Mordor for us (and without a magic ring to destroy, either!). In any case, the fact that Tolkien's estate does not enforce the copyright because they want people to use the scripts is entirely besides the point -- the question of whether any language that is in some sense owned by a private party is a valid one to ask. This would set an uncomfortable precedent for all parties and perhaps Unicode will need to get legal advice on what that means rather than have a bunch of non-lawyers and Tolkien enthusiasts tell everyone not to worry? MichKa Michael Kaplan Trigeminal Software, Inc. -- http://www.trigeminal.com/ ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Cowan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Michael Everson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: ""Michael (michka) Kaplan"" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2002 5:14 AM Subject: Re: Private Use Agreements and Unapproved Characters > Michael Everson scripsit: > > > Someone (I'm not saying you) would have to make cogent arguments > > against Tengwar for me to fathom why it would be perceived as > > unworthy of encoding. > > It would be easy to sketch the arguments: > > 1) Involving Unicode with That Elvish Stuff will bring it into > contempt and ridicule. We don't need this. > > 2) The people who want Elvish encodings are only doing it for > the hell of it, and can very well carry on with kludges at one > level or another. They don't need this. > > 3) Life is too short to worry about fictional encodings. > Nobody needs this. > > -- > John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.reutershealth.com > I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan > han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith. --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_ > >
