> From: D. Starner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2004 5:16 PM
[David replied to me off-list, but as there's nothing particularly private or controversial, I'm taking the liberty to respond on list, as it seems relevant for the thread.] > I find [PC's Sally/Latisha usage scenario] a bit unreasonable for several reasons. It may well not be reasonable, or reasonable but not a scenario we decide to give much weight to. I just threw it out as one of many possible scenarios, and specifically picking something are representative of a kind of scenario the original proposer might have had in mind that is unrelated to paleography. > * A comparable discussion could appear involving Fraktur and Latin characters > and Chao and Chang. I agree, but only somewhat. I think those situations are probably not as representative of the casual-, non-specialist-user scenario, and that in that case Sally and Latisha are probably more likely to be paying close attention to the fonts being used. Even for the non-specialist situation, in a Fraktur/Antigua case (the Chao vs Chang is definitely out at least for *non-Asian* non-specialists), Sally is telling Latisha, "Make sure it shows up with those dark, old-English-looking characters", and if it's Times or Helvetica Latisha will probably know it's wrong. In the Phoenician case, if anything Sally's probably saying, "This will show up looking like pretty unfamiliar letters -- like maybe a sideways A or something" and Latisha might well see square Hebrew and think it fits the description. > * Sally probably won't have a Phoenician font, so this fails > no matter what Unicode decides. Well, if Phoenician is to be encoded in the 05xx block, you're right. If it's encoded separately and platform or word-processor vendors bundle fonts that provide coverage for various ranges of Unicode, then she very well may have a Phoenician font. I don't think we can make your blanket statement here with confidence. > * Phoenician is an illustration more than text in this instance; if they > used a picture here, everything would have worked. True, but it takes more work to prepare a graphic than text, and it's not at all unreasonable to expect Sally would do the latter if she could have a reasonable expectation that it might work. If her software is likely the same as Latisha's and it comes with a Phoenician font, she can reasonably expect it to work. Of course, if the characters are unified, the software probably *didn't* come with a font... So, I guess this one comes out as indecisive. > * If they did use a Phoencian font, they could still be surprised mid-presentation > when they discover the school's computers don't have a Phoenician font installed. Certainly true; but that is an independent cause that could just as well be used to argue for not encoding any new script. You might as well say because the school's computer didn't have Arabic fonts there was no reason to encode Arabic. So, I think it's not a relevant counter-argument. Peter Peter Constable Globalization Infrastructure and Font Technologies Microsoft Windows Division
