A side note about this preliminary proposal for allocating blocks in the SMP for the two Pau Cin Hau scripts (including one for the large "logographic" script, with 1050 signs):
http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n3865.pdf (authored by Anshuman Pandey, in MIT) If the non-logographic Pau Cin Hau script (currently counting 57 signs in this preliminary report that does not give its sources and does not give examples) is effectively described as containing 21 separate consonnants, 7 separate vowels, and incidentally a few other (9) final consonnants (not different in fact from Greek with its final sigma, or even from Latin with its deprecated final "long s"), then it is certainly not a "syllabary", and probably not even an "alphasyllabary" ("abugida") unless the some or all of the consonnants carry their own inherent vowel that the vowel signs will modify. The addtional presence of diacritical tone marks will not be decisive for this classification. But may be there are some consonnants that combine the two aspects (with or without the inherent vowel), or some "consonnants" that are in fact coming from old ligatures treated now as separate letters and used to write a complete syllable distinctly from the separate consonnant and vowel (look for the Mandaic script for finding two similar examples at end of its alphabet). So why this documents still hesitates between "syllabary" and "alphasyllabary" when designating the 57-signs script ? For me it can only be a alphabet or an alphasyllabary (abugida), depending on the behavior of the consonnants (implicit presence of an inherent vowel, and absence of this vowel as a separate sign). Is that because this document confuses the "logographic" 1050-signs script with what it could really be, in fact a "syllabary" : 1050 signs is not exceptionnal and reasonnable for a syllabary (compare to UCAS or Ethiopic for example) but it is very small for a true logographic script (even if it contains ideograms or ideophonograms or are built using sometimes radical components but unsortable strokes like the sinographic script of China/Japan/Korea/Vietnam/Singapore that combine all these options). For me the N3781 document (from the same author) found at: http://zomilibrary.com/main/items/show/386 http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3781.pdf is much more useful than N3965 (I don't know why the later was posted again in a so abbreviated and confusive form). It reveals that the 57-sign script is in fact a true alphabet, and does not demonstrate any abugida feature : vowel /a/ for example uses a separate glyph. N3965 just adds the need to preallocate a separate bloc for the large "logographic" script which, given its preliminary glyph count is most probably a syllabary, but without giving any details about why this counting of 1050 signs would be accurate for preallocating now a block for it in the Roadmap of the SMP ! For me, the N3965 document is totally useless and gives no additional value to what was already in N3781. But N3781 has probably enough details for allocating a 64-position block in the SMP for the small script. Philippe.
