What is this thread for? We're going to encode Phoenician. It is the forerunner of Greek and Etruscan. Hebrew went its separate way. The fact that there is a one-to-one correspondence isn't important. We have that for Coptic and Greek too and we are disunifying them. I'm pretty sure we're going to encode Samaritan too....
Well, I started it, so let me comment. I have already accepted from what I have seen that Samaritan should be encoded, and http://www.orindalodge.org/fonts/kadosh_samaritan_manual_1_10.pdf strengthens the case for that, for me. And I think it is reasonable also that Phoenician should be encoded. This is on the principle accepted for Glagolitic that each of these scripts "appears unrecognizably different from" Hebrew.
I don't consider that the same case has been made for Palmyrene Aramaic. The script proposed for this is not "unrecognizably different from" but very similar to the square Aramaic script which is actually the technical name for the prototypical Hebrew script. It already says in Unicode (3.0 section 8.1) that "The Hebrew script is used for writing in the Hebrew language as well as Yiddish, Judezmo (Ladino), and a number of other languages." It might be suitable to add a note that the Hebrew script may also be used for ancient writings in Aramaic as well as Hebrew. These "ancient writings" could include Palmyrene etc inscriptions as well as the Bible, the Talmud etc.
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
