----- Message d'origine ----- Philippe Verdy a �crit : > >I was concerned recently by some people who wanted to better write the >Tifinagh languages
Stricto sensu, they are no tifinagh languages, but languages (or dialects of the Berber language) written with the tifinagh script. >(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). I'm not sure why you want to privilege the Latin script. A large part in chosing a script for tifinagh is based on subjective reasons. Tifinagh is seen as a neutral (neither Western, neither Arabic), indigeneous and deeply historically-rooted script. These sentiments must be respected and communities may choose whatever script they feel best suited for their own needs (affirming one's identity should not be disregarded here). >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... This makes no sense : the modern use of the Tifinagh script cannot be another script... You may have meant the modern day script used for the berber language. This is highly disputable (Morocco just started teaching Tifinagh in its schools and they are many Berber sites in Tifinagh and Arabic scripts). It also does not follow that being able to switch fonts between two scripts used for a language should take precedence over coding properly the different scripts. What if there is no one-to-one mapping between the characters of the different scripts ? What about a mapping between the Arabic and Tifinagh transcriptions of Berber ? Should we be able to switch between the Arabic and Latin transcriptions by a simple font adjustment ? What is one then to do with the � emphatiques conditionn�es � noted by some scholars in Latin and Tifinagh but for which no Arabic character seems to be available ? Patrick Andries
