[I am sending this email to both the Initiative for Cuneiform Encoding email list, [EMAIL PROTECTED], and the general Unicode email list, [EMAIL PROTECTED], in order to get comments from both the cuneiform and Unicode communities.]
>From the very first Initiative for Cuneiform Encoding conference at Johns Hopkins University in November 2000, I, along with all others I am aware of, have accepted unquestioningly the suggestion that we encode the complex Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform signs as separate code points in Unicode. For the non-cuneiformists on these lists, one way cuneiformists categorize cuneiform signs is as simple, compound, and complex signs - a simple sign being one not formed by combining two or more signs, a compound sign being one formed by postfixing one or more signs to form a grapheme cluster; and a complex sign being one formed by infixing one sign inside another to form a new sign. At both ICE conferences we decided to encode simple and complex signs but not compound signs. Recently I have had second thoughts about encoding complex signs. Modification of base, or simple, signs was a productive process for making new signs in the earlier periods of cuneiform usage, and included such modifications as adding or subtracting wedges, rotating signs, infixing signs, etc. (For some examples of how the ancient scribes modified base signs to form new complex signs see <http://www.jhu.edu/ ice/basesigns/>.) Instead of encoding all 875 post-archaic, base and complex cuneiform signs, we could instead encode the 280 base signs plus a dozen or so sign modifiers. (I am not including in these approximate figures the 75 or so numerical signs being proposed for encoding.) This would be somewhat analogous to encoding "a", "e", the acute accent, and the grave accent instead of encoding "a with acute", "a with grave", "e with acute", etc. Encoding base signs with modifiers would more closely mirror, in the encoding, the way the script system itself actually worked and it would more easily accommodate modern research in archaic cuneiform, a stage in cuneiform script development we have all decided not to encode for now due to the current provisional state of its scholarship. By providing in the encoding the base signs along with their modifiers cuneiformists working in archaic and other periods could generate newly discovered or newly analyzed complex signs ad hoc, without having to go through the time-consuming and expensive Unicode/ISO standardization process. Compound and complex sign realization would then simply be a matter of the coordination of input methods with fonts, something now doable by end users with modern computer operating systems. (This, of course, assumes that we are more likely to find new combinations and modifications of existing base signs than to find new base signs themselves. At any rate, when we do find new base signs we need to encode them anyway.) To most cuneiformists, of course, the encoding underpinnings would all be hidden by input methods and fonts. One would simply type the expected SHUD3 and the input method would map it to 3 code points, KA INFIX and SHU (mouth sign with hand sign infixed), and the font would render it as one complex sign (meaning "to pray"). And from a practical point of view encoding only the base signs and their modifiers would be easy for us to do - we need only remove the complex signs from our lists and add the 13 or 14 modifiers. Respectfully, Dean A. Snyder Scholarly Technology Specialist Library Digital Programs, Sheridan Libraries Garrett Room, MSE Library, 3400 N. Charles St. Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218 office: 410 516-6850 fax: 410-516-6229 Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project: www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi
