On 23 Aug 2012, at 22:48, Jameson Quinn wrote: >> Because the structure of the Mayan script is complex, and I don't believe >> that just saying that the numbers are simple and do not participate in that >> complexity is sufficient to convince us that encoding the numbers right now >> would not lead to undiscovered problems in the future. > > I never said the numbers do not participate in that complexity. In fact, I > explicitly brought up several ways that they do. What I said was, the numbers > are used by a significant population, today, who should not have to wait for > the Mayanists to get their act together.
Significant population? Some school kids somewhere? A couple of local magazines? Local usage is important, yes. Tengwar is used by lots of folks. > If we encode the numerals now, then once the script is eventually fully > encoded, one of several things will happen: I don't think you can possibly know what can happen. > • We will have (through responsible forethought) guessed right on the > metadata, and the pre-encoded numerals will be usable as-is in the general > encoding Guessing right is not adequate. Once a character has been encoded it can NEVER be removed. I don't know what you think "metadata" means in this context. > • We will have guessed wrong on the metadata, but in a way that can be > retroactively fixed with zero impact to any existing document which doesn't > contain non-numeric Mayan. Again, I don't know what you mean by "metadata", so I don't know what you think but if Mayan numbers are expected to > • We will have guessed wrong on the metadata, and the decision is made > that a retroactive fix is the best solution, given that it (say) impacts only > documents which mix Mongolian with Mayan numerals. I don't know what you think a "retroactive fix" is but it is unlikely that any "informative" as opposed to "normative" fix would be possible. > • We will have guessed wrong on the metadata, but anyway need to encode > multiple versions of the number glyphs, so having used up 20 codepoints for > modern users of the Mayan numerals is no big loss. We are not supposed to encode duplicate characters. > • We will have guessed wrong, and will end up with 2 versions of each > numeral glyph, a "modern use" and a "precolumbian style" version. The Universal Character Set is an International Standard. We cannot go in encoding things we do not have confidence in. > I think the latter 2 possibilities are both acceptable and unlikely. Am I > wrong? If so, why? Cutting to the chase, I can tell you honestly that I will oppose in committee any move to encode only the numbers of the Mayan script as doing so would be irresponsible. We must encode Mayan properly. Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
