Michael Everson wrote: >>(Mayan is on the Roadmap to Plane One, but it doesn't look as >>though there's been any detailed proposal yet.) >I believe that structurally it will work as well as Egyptian. But No >one has weighed in on my proposal for Egyptian so far, except for >people complaining about the repertoire. Fair enough, but it's the >architecture that needs to be agreed first. The proposal is N1944.pdf and can be found on the Roadmap to Plane One at: http://www.egt.ie/standards/iso10646/smp-roadmap-table.html (It's 84 pages, 3562096 bytes.) If nobody has complained about the proposed architecture... maybe it's because there's nothing to complain about. The structure intentionally parallels that of existing computer implementations which are in use and have been used by Egyptologists for many years. The set-up preserves plain text practicality while providing for special features such as the cartouche, reversed characters, and even the color red for special phrases (which is represented by a horizontal line above in plain text). As for complaints about the repertoire, it follows existing computer fonts and the proposal allows for further extensions. The proposal covers encoding needs well and its structure could apply to other pictographic scripts like Mayan. Some of the special shading glyphs which indicate damaged portions in the source might be placed in a common area, though, as other transcription systems for ancient writings have similar needs. (This commonality is mentioned in the proposal.) On the other hand, perhaps they should stay where they are in order to keep the conversion from older encoding simple. Maybe for these positions the names should be changed from "EGYPTIAN... " to "PICTOGRAPHIC... " or "SOURCE DAMAGE..." . Display issues which are beyond the scope of an encoding standard might be resolved by a 'hieroglyphic mark-up language', just as there is a math mark-up language for mathematic display. Using the standard Egyptian glyph catalog numbers for the naming table is probably the best way to go, but it seems a shame to lose the picturesque names like "standing monkey holding a severed head". Perhaps this information could be included in the database under a description field? Best regards, James Kass.
