Philippe Verdy scripsit: > > In fact no; both Mongolian (or Manchu, which is unified with it in > > Unicode) and Chinese are written TTB. > > Then, why did you say that: > > > What's uncertain is whether a lr or a rl progression is favored, > > given the paucity of evidence. Michael favors lr progression. > > There is no question that the text is read BTT.
That statement refers to Ogham, not Mongolian! Ogham carved on stone is read up one side of the stone, then (if necessary) across the top of the stone, then (if necessary) down the other side of the stone. Now maybe it's just a mistake to assimilate this scheme to any kind of two-dimensional layout, since all known instances of Ogham on manuscript are ordinary horizontal L2R, like Latin (with which it is most often mixed). The difficulty arises when Ogham is mixed with vertical Han or with Mongolian, since once the basic directionality becomes vertical, the tendency to read the Ogham BTT will become automatic. This is analogous to the problem that fantasai has pointed out with Latin script written in lr progression when Han gets mixed in: the normal reading direction of lr-Latin is BTT, but any Han included will automatically be read TTB, corrupting it. *sigh* One of my favorite lines in the Unicode Standard reads: "There simply is no traditional Japanese method of typesetting Devanagari." -- John Cowan www.ccil.org/~cowan www.reutershealth.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] There are books that are at once excellent and boring. Those that at once leap to the mind are Thoreau's Walden, Emerson's Essays, George Eliot's Adam Bede, and Landor's Dialogues. --Somerset Maugham
