Dear Andrew, Thank you for comment.
On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:17:14 +0100 Andrew West <[email protected]> wrote: >On 27 March 2012 06:18, suzuki toshiya <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Is there any typesetted material of modern Yi syllabic script in vertical >> writing mode? > >Probably nothing more than titles on book spines and names of >government offices written on gate pillars. However, I believe that >these examples are sufficient to establish the vertical writing mode >of the modern Yi script. My observation is that the standardized >Liangshan Yi script that is encoded in Unicode is written vertically >with no rotation of glyphs, in the same way that Chinese characters >are written vertically. My observation is only in imported bookstores in Japan, and some photos taken by the foreign visitors. I expected more living vertical texts of Yi may exist in China, but it might be too optimistic... >> On the spines of the manually written books for old Yi, the situation >> is same; non-rotated glyphs are laid out vertically. Ah, vertical is >> the native writing mode, so I should say as "on the front cover, non- >> rotated glyphs are laid out horizontally". > >That seems reasonable, but as Old Yi was written in a variety of >orientations in different times and different places it is hard to >agree on what the "correct" vertical and horizontal layout of Old Yi >(or perhaps more correctly, the various Old Yi scripts) should be. Please let me ask a stupid question for confirmation; the top/ bottom for Old Yi glyph cannot be defined without a specification the time & place that the script was used? In previous post, I wrote as if Yunnan Old Yi glyphs were not rotated from their original shapes, and Sichuan Old Yi glyphs were rotated (as modern Liangshan Yi) - it would be hasty observation, and I should not assume a history as if Sichuan Old Yi glyphs were rotated at some stage. It's right understanding? >Moreover, as Old Yi has not been encoded, and therefore cannot be >represented in Unicode (other than using the PUA), the orientation >behaviour of Old Yi does not seem particularly relevant to Unicode in >general or to UTR#50 (http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr50/tr50-3.html) >in particular. >Really, anything >written in an "Old Yi" script is irrelevant to discussions of the >behaviour of the standardized Liangshan Yi script, and just causes >unnecessary confusion and eventually leads to the definition of >incorrect vertical text layout properties for Unicode Yi. Indeed, Old Yi is not coded yet, I know (rather, no official proposal is submitted to WG2, I think). And, I think your pointing is very important - "Modern (Liangshan syllabicalized) Yi and Old Yi should be regarded as different scripts and they could have different preferences about their text layouts" (it's right understanding?) I was assuming that modern Liangshan syllabicalized Yi and Old Yi materials may share same preferences about vertical writing mode, but it might be hasty assumption - I have to agree, the materials in my hands are too few to push my assumption. Checking the latest draft of UTR#50, it seems that the vertical writing mode for UCS Yi is different from CJK Ideographs; 3400..4DBF ; U ; U ; U 4DC0..4DFF ; U ; U ; U 4E00..9FFF ; U ; U ; U A000..A48F ; S ; S ; S A490..A4CF ; S ; S ; S I guess that somebody found a vertical writing mode of UCS Yi with "rotated" (umm, I should say as "recovery-rotated?") glyphs, or, somebody guessed the vertical writing mode of UCS Yi by Old Yi materials. If the background is former, I want to see it. >> In the volume for Sichuan dialect (p.751), you can find the glyphs >> looking like modern-Yi-after-rotation. You may wonder if "the volume >> for Sichuan dialect includes only modern Yi, and it should not be >> recognized as Old Yi?". In the last page for Sichuan volume (p.889), >> you can find some glyphs that are not included in modern Yi. About Sichuan dialect, I found another book (ISBN 7-81001-474-9/B, not dictionary, a collection of annotated Old Yi texts for Chinese scholars) having several Old Yi dialects. The scanned images are: Yunnan dialects https://www.codeblog.org/blog/mpsuzuki/images/20120328_0.gif Sichuan dialects https://www.codeblog.org/blog/mpsuzuki/images/20120328_1.gif Guizhou dialects https://www.codeblog.org/blog/mpsuzuki/images/20120328_2.gif In Sichuan dialects, I could not find the orientation of the glyphs in Sichuan volumes of ISBN 7-5367-2637-6 https://www.codeblog.org/blog/mpsuzuki/images/20120327_1.gif More investigation is needed. Regards, mpsuzuki
