At 23:01 -0400 2004-04-28, Dean Snyder wrote:
Michael Everson is one of the authors of the proposal to encode 2400 years of cuneiform in one unified encoding. There is far greater disparity between URIII Sumerian and Neo-Babylonian embodied in that proposed single encoding than there is between Old Phoenician and Modern Israeli Hebrew script. Where's the consistency? Where's the pattern here for us to follow?
There isn't a recipe, as Ken said:
>There *are* no axiomatic principles ofscript identity which can be applied across the board to decide that and all other instances of historical boundaries for a candidate script to have its repertoire of characters separately encoded in Unicode.
I'm not asking for self-evident principles - I'm asking for TRIED and PROVEN principles, or maybe just guidelines, but at least explicit ones. If I would expect it from anyone on earth it would be from you encoding jocks.
Well, I have pointed out script history, ductus, and modern legibility as criteria which I have followed. What I hear back is nothing more than "It is Hebrew! It is Hebrew!"
'Tisn't.
>1. Hebrew is already encoded, so just use Hebrew letters for >everything and change fonts for every historical variety.
Which, along with transliteration, is precisely what the Phoenician scholarly community is doing now.
So you say. Most Phoenician fonts I have seen are Latin hacks. If some are Hebrew hacks, well, they are still hacks. There are Hebrew hacks for Samaritan, too, and there are Arabic hacks for N'Ko.
>2. Encode a separate repertoire for each stylistically distinctabjad ever recorded in the history of Aramaic studies, from Proto-Canaanite to modern Hebrew (and toss in cursive Hebrew, for that matter), starting with Tables 5.1, 5.3, 5.4, and 5.5 of Daniels and Bright and adding whatever you wish to that.
There is so much fluidity in such competing classifications that freezing any one of them into several standard encodings would cause much data and software distress.
Quantify. I do not find such a high degree of fluidity (until you get to Aramaic proper which is so complex that we aren't looking into it. The scripts proposed for unification under Phoenician are pretty well-behaved, where REAL font variation can be seen.
>> I'm not saying we shouldn't encode the "landmarks" in the Canaanitescript continuum;
You aren't? Good. Then instead of objecting on generic grounds to the Phoenician proposal, answer the following question:
A. Does Phoenician constitute a "landmark" in the Canaanite script continuum? Yes/No
It depends ;-)
As I've stated on the Hebrew list, my reticence to the proposal is based on two factors:
1) The script is wrongly called "Phoenician" - the same script was used for Old Phoenician, Old Aramaic, Old Hebrew, Moabite, Ammonite, and Edomite. That is why I propose it be named "[Old] Canaanite"
I would consider Canaanite to be the pseudo-hieroglyphic Sinaitic. That splits into three: Ugaritic, South Arabian, and Phoenician. Mark and I will look at some more charts, but these seem to be the relevant nodes.
2) Discussions of this proposal have always been closely linked with proposals to encode Aramaic and Samaritan.
There are no proposals to encode Aramaic, as I say for the dozenth time. And Samaritan is definitely a beast of its own, descended from Phoenician, as Hebrew also is (through a separate and distinct path).
And this is where we step into really turbulent waters (to keep my metaphor alive). My only suggestion has been that we slow down, do not proceed precipitously, and get more scholarly input.
The repertoire for Phoenician has not changed for a decade, apart from the numbers (and I did take note that we need to look at the fours and the fives again).
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Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
