Kenneth re-iterated: >Dean continued: > >> Or (making the missed point explicit): > >I attempted to bring this thread back on track yesterday, but >since it seems to have veered off into the ditch again, we >may as well spin our wheels some more, I guess. :-(
My response to your assessment was that it completely ignored the PROBLEMS that encoding a diascript could cause; I don't believe that that is off-track wheel-spinning. >> If the UTC did consider the potential for large numbers of users as a >> decisive criterion for encoding a script, > >The UTC and WG2 *do* consider the potential for a significant >number of users as *one* criterion for encoding a script. It may >not be a *decisive* criterion, and people's opinions will vary >concerning how large a number of users has to be to be considered >significant. Certainly more than one. The numbers-of-users argument was presented as decisive and I pointed out that it should not be decisive. >> Japanese would be separately encoded. > >This is an utter non demonstrandum. "Japanese" is a writing >system, not a script. The Unicode Standard does not encode >writing systems -- it encodes scripts. And the scripts used >by the Japanese writing system *are* separately encoded -- >separately from other scripts. Kanji, the only unified part of the Japanese writing system, and, naturally, of course, that part to which I was referring, is not separately encoded. >> I can assure you, that there would be many users for a >> separately encoded Japanese, > >On what basis do you assert that? Especially given that there >are, in this case, literally tens of millions of users of >Japanese language data represented using the characters >encoded in the Unicode Standard as currently defined. I really dumbfounded that the logic is not being followed here. BEFORE CJK was unified in Unicode, IF Japanese (meaning Kanji, of course, to be pedantic) had been separately encoded (and also Chinese, and Korean), I say there would have been many users of a separately encoded Japanese. Do you deny that? If numbers of users (the logic being suggested for Phoenician) is justification enough to encode, then why did you NOT separately encode Japanese (Kanji of course) for all those many more potential users? >> just as there would be for a separately encoded Fraktur, > >A faulty analogy, as well as another assertion with no >apparent evidence to back it up. I have given in previous emails what I believe to be sufficient and specific evidence for my claim that "Phoenician" is to Jewish Hebrew what Fraktur is to Roman German. Do I need to repeat it? ;-) Without giving any countermanding evidence, you just assert baldly that it is a faulty analogy. That's not good enough. >> And >> since Japanese and Fraktur are not separately encoded just because there >> would be lots of people who would use such an encoding, > >Unless you are using "just because" in some sense I am unfamiliar >with in the English language, this claim makes no sense whatsoever >to me. I see, even from other responses, that my wording here was, to say the least, infelicitous. What I was trying to say, of course, was that, since Japanese and Fraktur were not separately encoded EVEN THOUGH there would have been lots of people who would use such encodings, a fortiori the far smaller number of potential Phoenician users should not be taken as decisive for its encoding. >The Japanese writing system and the Fraktur style of the >Latin script are not separately encoded because neither is >adjudged to be a distinct script, not because of some >speculative census of potential users. And the separate script business is precisely the point that you have failed to prove for Phoenician (while I have provided multiple evidence that it is not a separate script), and so you keep falling back on your argument that some people want it anyway, to which I counter, is their desire of sufficient significance to introduce complications for Semitic scholars, the main users of the "scripts" in question? >> why would you, on that same faulty basis, > >Making a nonsensical claim, then (falsely) attributing it to >others as the basis of claims they make would seem to be a >double red herring to me. The claim was not nonsensical and it is not a false attribution that others were using the numbers-of-users argument as being decisive. >> support a separate encoding for Phoenician? > >Michael, I, and a number of others have already stated >sufficient reasons for why we would support a separate encoding >for the Phoenician (~Old Canaanite) script. But I can recall no evidence you have given that Phoenician IS a separate script. >... >By the way, as your attempted analogy above appears to demonstrate >a failure to understand the distinction between a writing system >and a script for the purposes of encoding in the Unicode Standard, >perhaps you would consider recusing yourself from further >argumentation regarding the proposed encoding of Phoenician. > >No? I thought not, but I had to give it a try. #1 What does knowledge about writing system/script distinctions have to do with Phoenician? You're not claiming any writing system status for Phoenician are you? #2 I have actually written commercial internationalization software for the Japanese writing system and its four scripts, Kanji, Katakana, Hiragana, and Romaji. Knowing that, are you now willing to re-consider your suggestion that I might not be qualified to discuss a Phoenician proposal? #3 Does a dearth of research experience in Phoenician qualify one for argumentation regarding its proposed encoding? ;-) Respectfully, Dean A. Snyder Assistant Research Scholar Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project Computer Science Department Whiting School of Engineering 218C New Engineering Building 3400 North Charles Street Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218 office: 410 516-6850 cell: 717 817-4897 www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi
