Peter Kirk <peterkirk at qaya dot org> wrote:I certainly don't think there is one rule or one definition, but I can well imagine several factors and thus guidelines. I just hope there is some regularity in the justifications and one does not eschew questioning (as above) by saying every case is different. This sounds sometimes a bit too arbitrary to me.
Because each such case has to be judged on its individual merits,
according to proper justification and user requirements. There can be
no hard rules like "always split" or "always join".
Nobody, neither Michael nor anyone else, ever advocates such a rule.
Do no intrinsic objective qualities of scripts (number of symbols, recognizability of the symbols (?), contextual handling, directionality, etc.) explain the spliting/joining and, in the last resort, are the reasons to be found in the way the user communities feel (as interpreted by the proposers) and acceptable genealogy (this unencoded script is a "too distant relative" to any encoded script or it is an ancestor to more than just the scripts already encoded and we need to cover those other scripts used). Well, those would be guidelines at least.
No hard rules, but guidelines.
P. A.
In the case above, I was more interested in knowing what Peter Kirk thought were the reasons Greek and Coptic should have been disunified. I'm sorry to have asked.
