From: "Don Osborn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > As for other African scripts, they are most notable in the western > and northern parts of the continent. Tifinagh and N'ko are in the > process of being encoded. I just had a conversation with someone > the other day who recounted seeing a letter written in Tifinagh > script in a rural part of northern Niger written by someone to a > local chief - quietly this script continues to be used.
I was concerned recently by some people who wanted to better write the Tifinagh languages (such as Berber) with the Latin script (notably for North Africa, but also in Europe due to the important North African community, notably in France). The current situation of the Berber language can no longer be maintained: there's a real need to support the language with a unique encoding system, even if it involves variants for glyphs (there are differences between the official Moroccoan initiative and the desires of Berber people in other African or European countries). One of the most acute problem comes with the representation of Ayin, and problems related to the case conversions of this letter (what is the correct way to represent the uppercase Ayain? There are divergences as some will want to borrow a Greek Sigma glyph, others will prefer the mirrored 3-shaped glyph). Same problem with the dot below consonnants: is it really a dot-below diacritic or shouldn't there be a separate encoding for the "dotted" consonnants, which would allow them to be rendered as dot below or above or on the right or with an asterisk glyph, possibly with a compatibility mapping to the sequence <Latin consonnant, combining dot-below> When the Tifinagh script will be standardized, it would then be interesting to allow it to be rendered correctly with Latin letters and diacritic glyphs on a user font preference, as it corresponds more to the now modern use of the script... It would have the benefit of allowing interchanges of dictionnaries and texts even if they are rendered differently. It could be possible if the transliteration between the historic Tifinagh script and the Latin script obeys to precise presentation rules, and also possible because there does not seem to exist for now a precise orthograph of Tifinagh-based languages when they are written with the Latin script (and this does not facilitate the exchange of information between people sharing the same language but distinct conventions for the written language).
