Ernest Cline wrote:
I would be very surprised if there were such a cybercafe. One that had both a Hebrew-Phoenican and a Hebrew-Hebrew font with the Hebrew-Phoenician as the default would be much easier to believe as a possibility. Still, it is a valid point. I think that if Phoenician were to be unified with Hebrew, it would probably behoove Unicode to establish variation sequences for Phoenician.
Even with a separate Phoenician script, it might be a good idea to provide variation sequences that could be used to identify different script styles such as Paleo-Hebrew and Punic in the plain text.
This is not a practical use of variation sequences if, by this, you mean use of variation selectors. What are you going to do, add a variation selector after every single base character in the text? Are you expecting fonts to support the tiny stylistic variations between Phoenician, Moabite, Palaeo-Hebrew, etc. -- variations that are not even cleanly defined by language usage -- with such sequences?
Some people seem keen on variation selectors in the same way that others are keen on PUA: as a catch-all solution to non-existent problems.
John Hudson
