Jim Allan responded to Michael Everson: > I posted: > > > /Accordingly both Ewellic and Theban could be treated as ciphers of / > > /subsets of the Latin script. / > > ////Michael Everson responded: > > > I don't see how that follows at all. > > We have two scripts in which the forms of the characters are not at all > those of the Latin script.
True. > > However for both every character can be matched with a corresponding > character in the Latin script. True for Theban. Not true for Ewellic. > > So why would one be called a cipher and one not? See above. > > Ewellic, to be sure, does not match one to one with the standard Latin > alphabet. But I would presume that when Doug Ewell created it he was > familiar with either IPA or some other phonemic/phonetic notation such > as that in Webster dictionaries. I would suppose he created Ewellic as a > cipher of such characters. Not true, as Doug Ewell has himself stated, and as is documented in the Ewellic entry in the Conscript registry. > Would Ewellic be any more or less useful if coded as a cipher of IPA > characters rather than in the PUA? It can't be, since Ewellic is a phonemic script, created de novo, like Shavian, to represent phonemic sounds of English (primarily) as orthographic units. It wasn't designed as, nor is it a cipher of IPA. You could create an IPA-based orthography that would be isomorphic to the Ewellic units, and use that to *transliterate* Ewellic into something more readable for people familiar with IPA. But even that would not be a cipher -- it would simply be another Latin orthography used for transliteration. *Scripts* are writing systems designed to convey language content. Sometimes they convey phonemic units of languages; sometimes they convey other kinds of units. And inevitably, through historic change, they end up being very messy representations of language content. But the point is the elements of the script map (however obscurely) to the elements of the language(s). *Ciphers* are orthographies designed (ideally) to map one-to-one against graphemes of a writing system and (ideally) are designed to obscure those graphemes by using non-obvious forms to hide content from casual observers. And yes, I know that people can take a script and use it as a cipher (e.g.: Masonic use of Samaritan). And yes, I know that in principle, a cipher could graduate through common use into becoming a script in its own right (though I can't offhand think of an actual case to illustrate that). But jeez, louise, you'd think that people on this list would be sophisticated enough about writing systems and scripts to not have to have long, dragged-out arguments attempting to clarify the obvious. --Ken
