An adequate proposal for a complex script should surely include a proper account of the script behaviour and sample glyphs of presentation forms. And so such a proposal should include all that is needed for a developer, and is available some time before the new script is officially standardised.
I disagree. What you describe may be desirable, but in no way is it necessary. What is important to document in a proposal is what is necessary to *encode* text, not to display it. Remember that a lot of work was done on encoding complex scripts in Unicode before there were adequate font and shaping engine technologies in place to implement the character/glyph model as envisaged. Also, for some complex scripts, especially Arabic, how do you define what is 'needed for a developer' independent of the particular script style, individual typeface design and specific rendering technology? What is needed for Tom Milo to render Arabic using his technology is quite different from what is needed to render the same text in the same style in a typical OpenType implementation.
John Hudson
Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Theory set out to produce texts that could not be processed successfully
by the commonsensical assumptions that ordinary language puts into play.
There are texts of theory that resist meaning so powerfully ... that the
very process of failing to comprehend the text is part of what it has to offer
- Lentricchia & Mclaughlin, _Critical terms for literary study_
