On Tue, Jan 30, 2001 at 01:23:02PM -0800, Thomas Chan wrote:
> I don't think that CSUR is conclusive proof that there wouldn't be a
> deluge of demands for encoding fictional or constructed scripts if the
> likes of Tengwar or Klingon were encoded.
This is real life; we don't get much conclusive proof around here.
> If say, a
> fictional script were included and published by Unicode and ISO, then
> people all over would suddenly be aware of the fact that a fictional
> script got included, and perhaps they might conclude that they should
> submit their own pet scripts as well.
"Their own pet scripts"? Since when does the works of the greatest
fantasy author of the 20th century used by thousands become "pet scripts"?
On a calmer note, how many script submissions does Unicode and the
ISO 10646 working group get now? How about from people outside Unicode
and the working group? What about outside the standards bodies?
If my guess is right, there's very few submissions from outside Unicode,
and really no evidence that this would pick up significantly after Tengwar
or Klingon got encoded.
> Many people with very real scripts
> that they use in their daily lives were not aware of Unicode or that it
> would benefit them to have them encoded; I suspect the same is true for
> creators of fictional and constructed scripts.
("very real" and "fictional and constructed" not being disjunctive, of
course.) True. And?
> For example, it is easy to
> find a variety of fonts for fantasy runes or other alphabets that people
> have created, some based off a description in published fiction, but they
> have not gotten in touch with CSUR.
But those are the marginal cases that Unicode doesn't need to worry
about. They won't mess with Unicode, either. They aren't going to
be interested or patient enough to fill out the forms.
> Or take the case of the Hotsuma
> Tsutae syllabary, created in modern times to provide an fictional
> pre-Chinese writing system (http://www.jtc.co.jp/hotsuma/index-e.htm) for
> what is supposedly Old Japanese, which has books and articles published
> about it, and fonts in existence, but it has no contact with CSUR.
Unsurprisingly, the CSUR covers Western scripts better than Eastern
ones. You could probably know better than I do how many Eastern fictional
scripts there are. Even with that, is it right not to encode one language
that deserves it, because there may be more that deserve to be encoded,
or for fear (on what evidence) of spurious submissions?
--
David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org
