Peter Kirk wrote, (on the use of transliteration fonts)
> OK. And you agree that this is a proper thing to do, and that it should > not be considered a "cavalierly" and "antiquarian" action, "a throwback > to the past century"? Well, I don't think it would be cavalier in any sense to use a transliteration font. Hardly antiquarian or throwback, either. But, I don't for a minute think it's the proper thing to do. I think it would be silly and churlish. How fortunate that those who wish to do so aren't bound by my opinions, eh? See, those favoring the Phoenician proposal (as I see it) are trying to serve everyone. It's a Universal character set, after all. Those opposed, who may think the supporters are silly and churlish (or worse), want to bind us by *their* opinions, don't they? I don't see this as "serving everybody", rather it strikes me as being basically self-serving. > >(English is slippery. Whether the use of "cavalierly" above > >should be interpreted as 'like a gentleman' or 'with arrogance' > >would be a matter of opinion.) > >Ah, well, Unicode has some great cavaliers! It takes all kinds, as they say! > Of course. And the point of Unicode is to move away from this situation > of multiple encodings for the same script, ... And we get back to the gist. Is it a separate script? Would it be fair to ask for documentation that the ancient Phoenicians who used the script considered it to be a variant of modern Hebrew? (No, it's not a fair question at all. But, I think it's an appropriate question.) Also, I'm having trouble understanding why Semitic scholars wouldn't relish the ability to display modern and palaeo-Hebrew side-by-side in the same plain text document. And, even if *all* Semitic scholars aren't jumping at the chance, why the heck would they want to prevent it? Best regards, James Kass > On 22/05/2004 16:49, James Kass wrote: > > >Peter Kirk wrote, > > > > > > > >>As I understand it, what at least a number of Semitic scholars want to > >>do is not to transliterate, but to represent Phoenician texts with > >>Phoenician letters with the Unicode Hebrew characters, and fonts with > >>Phoenician glyphs at the Hebrew character code points. In other words, > >>to treat the difference between Hebrew and Phoenician as a font change, > >>like the difference between Fraktur and normal Latin script. Will they > >>be allowed to do that after a Phoenician block is defined, or will they > >>not? > >> > >> > > > >They'd simply use what's been called a "transliteration font" for this > >purpose. > > > >In order to effect the change, they'd probably have to "click" a > >"button" or two. Indeed, if they wanted to transliterate *and* > >"trans-code", they'd have to click a button or two, too. > > > >In other words, the end-user's burden for either approach would > >be about the same, a couple of clicks. > > > >>From a programming point of view, it's about as easy to re-map > >an existing font for masquerade/transliteration purposes as it is > >to write a character set conversion routine. > > > >Once again, for the end-user, the trouble involved should be about > >the same. In one case they install a font (font program), in the > >other case they install a character set conversion program. > > > > > > > OK. And you agree that this is a proper thing to do, and that it should > not be considered a "cavalierly" and "antiquarian" action, "a throwback > to the past century"? > > > ... > > > >(English is slippery. Whether the use of "cavalierly" above > >should be interpreted as 'like a gentleman' or 'with arrogance' > >would be a matter of opinion.) > > > > > > > Ah, well, Unicode has some great cavaliers! > > >>If a few people encode a significant number of texts according to their > >>preferences, this implies a corpus in mixed encodings, which is what I > >>am trying to avoid. > >> > >> > > > >As others have pointed out, the very situation you wish to avoid > >already exists. Some work is transliterated into Latin, some into > >Hebrew. It wouldn't surprise if Greek and Cyrillic transliteration > >wasn't practiced, as well. Also, there are conflicting code pages > >for Hebrew still in use, apparently. > > > > > > Of course. And the point of Unicode is to move away from this situation > of multiple encodings for the same script, by providing a single defined > encoding for each one and properly defined conversion paths from legacy > encodings. With Unicode, there will be no need to continue to encode > Phoenician or Hebrew with 8-bit masquerading fonts and visual ordering > (and yes, Michael, such things are a big problem and I agree that we > should try to eradicate them), and it will be possible to convert texts > to proper Unicode encoding. But if there are two competing Unicode > encodings for the same text, and no defined mappings between them (as > both compatibility equivalence and interleaved collation seem to have > been ruled out), the advantages of going to Unicode are lost. > > >Either way things end up, the end-user just has to click a > >couple of buttons. Where's the problem? > > > > > > Well, it's a lot more complex than this for searches, that's where the > basic problem will be. Plus people don't particularly like being > labelled "cavalierly" and "antiquarian", when in fact it is the > "cavalierly" (proposed) actions of Unicode which are ignoring what they > want to continue to do. > > On 22/05/2004 16:20, Michael Everson wrote: > > > At 15:47 -0700 2004-05-22, Peter Kirk wrote: > > > >> As I understand it, what at least a number of Semitic scholars want > >> to do is not to transliterate, but to represent Phoenician texts with > >> Phoenician letters with the Unicode Hebrew characters, and fonts with > >> Phoenician glyphs at the Hebrew character code points. In other > >> words, to treat the difference between Hebrew and Phoenician as a > >> font change, like the difference between Fraktur and normal Latin > >> script. > > > > > > More hearsay! Who has offered any evidence of this? No one. ... > > > Well, Dean Snyder has been saying for some time that he wants the > difference between Hebrew and Phoenician to be a font change, and it is > certainly what Dr Kaufman has in mind. If you don't accept evidence from > top scholars in this field, whose evidence will you accept? > > And if you want evidence of use of corresponding glyph to code point > mappings for Phoenician/palaeo-Hebrew and square Hebrew fonts, looks at > the following: > > http://members.tripod.com/~ebionite/fonts.htm: palaeo-Hebrew mapped as > "Web Hebrew", which is basically ISO 8859-8 visual. > > http://www.historian.net/files.htm: set of various Semitic fonts > including Phoenician with the same mappings. > > http://www.linguistssoftware.com/archaic.htm. > > etc. > > > ... > > > >> Will they be allowed to do that after a Phoenician block is defined, > >> or will they not? If the answer is that they will not, this justifies > >> the objection that a new Phoenician block interferes with the work of > >> the real experts in the field, in order to meet the not very clearly > >> defined requirements of a few non-experts. > > > > > > I consider this to be a theoretical construct on your part. Most > > Semiticists use Square Hebrew because they read Hebrew. I don't > > believe they are making Phoenican fonts to view the Phoenician data in > > their databases. They are just writing the stuff with Hebrew letters. > > I have yet to see a Phoenician font of the kind that you posit here. > > > I listed a number of Phoenician/palaeo-Hebrew fonts above, and there are > several others. They are not Unicode-based, but many of them are based > on masquerading of encodings originally defined for Hebrew. > > There also seems to be a sub-culture of people who like to read the > Hebrew Bible with palaeo-Hebrew glyphs, see e.g. > http://www.crowndiamond.org/cd/torah.html (yes, these people are > currently using an 8-bit visual order encoding). I'm not sure why they > do this, but their needs deserve to be considered. > > > > > And Dean's suggestion that "most people use Hebrew and Phoenician > > alike in ASCII clones" is not worth consideration as a reason to > > "unify" Hebrew and Phoenician. > > > Why not? > > > > >> If a few people encode a significant number of texts according to > >> their preferences, this implies a corpus in mixed encodings, which is > >> what I am trying to avoid. > > > > > > FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME, Anyone working in the field is going to have > > to deal with the corpus being available for searching in LATIN > > transliteration ANYWAY. > > > And FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME, this is what we all want to move away from > and this is why Unicode was defined. > > On 22/05/2004 19:41, Mark E. Shoulson wrote: > > > Peter Kirk wrote: > > > >> The fear is rather that a few people, who are not true Semitic > >> scholars, will embrace the new range, and by doing so will make > >> things much harder for the majority who don't need and don't want the > >> new encoding. One of the original purposes of Unicode was to move > >> away from the old situation in which many different incompatible > >> encodings were used for the same language and script. We don't want > >> to get back into that situation. > > > > > > That's awfully elitist, isn't it? "Some *non*-scholars want it (if > > they'll embrace it, it follows that they'd want it if offered), but we > > can't be swayed by the desires of the hoi polloi." Non-scholars get > > to use Unicode too, and have a right to influence what gets in it. > > Just because the userbase isn't the people you thought it would be > > doesn't mean they don't count. > > > My intention here is not elitist but democratic, to consider the > requirements of the majority of people who actually use the scripts in > question. Hoi polloi (Greek: the majority) don't actually use Phoenician > script. Semitic scholars do. A rather small number of other people do. I > am suggesting that we look for the views of the majority of those who > actually use the script. And of the views expressed on this list by > actual users, or reported here with specific names and details, I see a > majority for unifying Phoenician with Hebrew. In fact I think only two > actual users have favoured non-unification, Deborah Anderson and George > Khalaf, plus Michael if he is really a user himself. But several users, > Semitic scholars, have favoured unification. > > > > > ... > > > > I don't think the "majority vs. one or two malcontents" picture that > > you're drawing here is even vaguely reminiscent of reality. > > > I don't claim an overwhelming majority. But even if it is only four to > three, that is still a majority. > > On 22/05/2004 21:02, Curtis Clark wrote: > > > It's hard for me to believe that the world community of Semitic > > scholars is so small or monolithic that there aren't differences of > > opinion among them. I have been almost automatically suspicious of the > > posts by the Semiticists opposed to encoding Phoenician; after > > thirty-four years in academia (longer if I count that my father was a > > professor when I was a youth), I have yet to see a field in which > > there were not differences of opinion. Admittedly, all Semiticists > > might agree on the nature of Phoenician (just as all chemists accept > > the periodic table), but the fervor exhibited here makes me wonder > > what the issues *really* are. I am used to seeing such fervor among > > academics only when there has been some unstated agenda at work. And > > so I wonder, are we in this list reading only one side of an internal > > squabble among Semiticists? > > > If so, please give us some evidence for another side. But maybe it is > something else. For example, if you read evolutionary biologists > strongly defending Darwinian evolution against creationist theories, > does that imply an internal squabble among evoutionary biologists and > therefore that some support creationism? Or does it rather imply a > closing of ranks against outsiders who are attacking their discipline, a > defence against (what they perceive as) unscientific attacks from those > who don't know what they are talking about? > > On 23/05/2004 09:14, saqqara wrote: > > >Elaine, it would be interesting to read Prof. Kaufman's opinion of why > >Phoenician should not be regarded as a distinct script (family). Can he be > >persuaded to publish his reasoning for UTC to consider? > > > > > > See https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2004-May/012945.html. > See also > http://www.nelc.ucla.edu/Faculty/Schniedewind_files/NWSemitic/Aramaic_ABD.pdf > for an article on Aramaic by Kaufman. > > >However despite the discussion of current techniques and preferences among > >scholars, the ONLY question here is whether 'Phoenician' counts as a > >distinct script as far as Unicode principles are concerned. If the proposal > >on the table is accurate and silence seems to imply it is > > > > > > Silence?? Is that what you call 1000 or so objections and > counter-objections on this list? There is no point in objecting to the > details of a proposal if the principle of it is not acceptable. > > >If it does and is then standardise it as such and we can move on to the far > >more interesting and challenging question of how better to use computers to > >work with multilingual texts and source materials in ancient scripts and > >languages. > > > >For Unicode, implementation of Phoenician as a font switch for Hebrew as an > >alternative proposal fails at the first hurdle if, as is claimed by some > >here, modern Hebrew readers do not regard Phoenician fonts as valid Hebrew > >fonts (in the sense that an English/Latin reader would acknowledge older > >cursive and type styles as valid and readable, if sometimes odd and > >unfamiliar). At least thats how I read the arguments about unification. So > >this is an important issue to address in a counter-proposal, although not > >the only one. > > > > > > This is indeed a good argument, much better than the argument that two > or three users support the proposal. The counter-argument is that in > other cases (such as Suetterlin) lack of legibility is not considered a > clear criterion for separate encoding of a script, when the illegible > form is part of a script continuum. > > A lot more than two or three people wanted Klingon to be encoded, but it > wasn't because actual use as a separate script could not be > demonstrated. Surely the same is true of Phoenician. > > On 23/05/2004 10:54, Philippe Verdy wrote: > > > ... > > > >My opinion here is that Phoenician would unify more easily with Greek or Coptic > >than with Hebrew... What is unique in Phoenician is that it has a weak > >directionality (can be written in either direction, although RTL is probably > >more common and corresponds to the most important sources of usage in old > sacred > >texts from which semitic script familiess for Aramaic or Early Hebrew have > >genetic relations). > > > > > > > Do you have any evidence for this? Are there actual Phoenician > inscriptions in LTR or boustrophedon? I understood that such things > started when the Greeks borrowed the Canaanite alphabet and started > playing around with it. > > Unfication with Coptic is of course ridiculous, because Coptic is > derived from much later Greek, plus a few Demotic letters. Unification > with Greek, or for that matter Coptic, is anyway impossible because > these scripts are already defined as strong LTR, and Phoenician is > certainly not that. > > -- > Peter Kirk > [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal) > [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) > http://www.qaya.org/ > >
