I wasn't aware that the Samaritan script is in current use. In that case, and assuming that the modern users do not see this alphabet as a variant of Hebrew (or Syriac or Arabic), it should indeed be encoded separately in Unicode.
On the argument that the name of God is sometimes written in paleo-Hebrew: surely this is simply a glyph variant. If I find a Latin script Bible etc in which the name of God, and nothing else, is written in italics - or in small caps which is actually a common practice - is that justification for encoding a separate italic, or small caps, Latin alphabet? Or perhaps this name of God can be considered as a special glyph on its own, cf. U+FDF2. But I can see the argument that paleo-Hebrew and Phoenician are sufficiently different from prototypical Hebrew that they should be considered a separate script. On the other hand, modern handwritten Hebrew is probably at least as different from prototypical Hebrew, and may even be separately derived from ancient Phoenician via paleo-Hebrew.
It seems to me that the case is much less clear for Aramaic. The glyphs proposed in http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n2042.pdf (which is linked to from the roadmap) are apparently the Palmyrene ones from figure 5.5 column XVIII of http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2311.pdf. A comparison of these with the Hebrew square characters in column XVII, and with the prototypical Unicode glyphs for Hebrew, shows significant differences in only 3-4 letters. The same seems to be true of the Nabatean script, although some of the variants given show tendencies towards Arabic as well. These kinds of differences seem to me within the acceptable boundaries of font changes. Again the differences from prototypical Hebrew are less than between modern handwritten Hebrew and prototypical Hebrew.
I would agree with John that it would be good to have input from Hebrew readers on this. I have added Hebrew to the subject line in the hope of attracting some attention.
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
