It is very interesting to me that there does seem to have been a glyph distinction (though a very subtle one) between sin and shin, in the "serech" example (http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/orion/programs/Altman/serech.jpg) of what is undoubtedly (in Unicode terms) Hebrew script. If this distinction can be verified a case can be made for encoding a separate HEBREW LETTER SIN, equivalent to shin with sin dot. But it is difficult to verify this when three scribes within the same document make the distinction in three different ways.
You're going to have to help me with this one. What is the difference you see between shin and sin in this document? The quality of the picture is so poor it's hard to read, but at least one undeniable sin doesn't look different (to me) from the shins there. What are you seeing?
~mark
