If there is, however, some consensus that Samaritan and Manichaen *do* deserve separate encoding consideration, how about pursuing the furthering of encoding proposals for those as distinct scripts and then come back around later to review the ancient forms once again after some more of the pieces have fallen into place?
Oh, Manichaean is certainly going to be encoded. The German scholars I met with in Prague last year have been extremely helpful in working out the specifications needed. And I am supposed to meet with Iranian experts later this year to finalize things.
Regarding Samaritan, there is a group of modern users certainly. This page http://www.orindalodge.org/kadoshsamaritan.php has a number of interesting links on it. Masonic scholars apparently differentiate between Hebrew and Samaritan.
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Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
