At 14:48 -0700 2001-04-20, Kenneth Whistler wrote:
>Rick said:
>
>> The serious scholars seem to already have software systems that are
>> adequate for their needs -- e.g. the Manel de Codage.
>
>That is sufficient for some needs, but clearly does not suffice for
>standardization of Egyptian hieroglyphics, which is what the German
>Egyptologists, in particular, seem to be worrying about.
They are worried about the repertoire. The Manual de codage *coding
conventions*, as used to manipulate the characters, are implemented
in a number of software packages on Mac and PC, have not been
criticized.
> > Some people just want to be able to send around Hieroglyphs in the
>> Gardiner set, or similar, for populist purposes -- as Carl-Martin says,
>> "funware" -- and sometimes armchair scholarship. Many serious scholars
>> don't want to see that situation because they (apparently) fear it would
>> undermine their eventual, more perfect proposal, and lead the populace
>> astray. Either that or they can't be bothered wasting their time on such
>> frivolity.
>
>This is an element of truth in this, but I think it overstates the case.
I don't. I agree with Rick.
>Some of the Egyptologists are concerned with what they see as serious
>flaws in the Manuel de codage, and are legitimately worried that if
>it is simply encoded quickly in the international standard, that they
>will thereafter forever be hampered by erroneous unifications or splits
>of characters when they have completed enough research on the repertoire
>to come around with a more completely researched repertoire proposal
>at a later time.
KEN! KEN! These are repertoire issues.
In N1944 I present 761 "basic" characters, 40 formatting characters,
and 4548 "extended" characters. Now the basic characters belong to
the Gardiner set, which is by far and away the most commonly known
set of characters. This is the set you find expounded in all the
basic grammars and all the introductory books you buy in museums and
library exhibitions and so on.
The Germans have told us that people are working on a bigger set of
extended characters, where unifications and splits are to be
identified. Fine, I have no objection to waiting a decade for
Egyptian Hieroglyphs Extension A to be ready for encoding.
But I get a lot of mail about "what's going on with Egyptian?" --
there is some pressure from users to get basic Egyptian encoded.
>The code it now because it is useful argument could have been applied
>to pre-unification Han, for example. We could have just stuck in
>JIS X 0208 quickly, "because it is useful and widely used", and only
>later come around and tried to figure out how to do a unified repertoire
>and ordering for Han characters. It might have been a feasible way to
>approach the problem, but it would not have been ideal for something
>which, when done, becomes permanent.
That wouldn't apply to the Gardiner set. This is SO widespread (and
relatively small) that even if there are some splits or unifications
in it, it is worth encoding each of them anyway. Consider those to be
like simplified and traditional Chinese. Now, the rest of the set,
the much larger set, that SHOULD wait for the scholars to be happy
with it. The amateur community, the enthusiast community, and the
community of first-year students of Egyptian don't need that set.
They need the Gardiner set.
>And in a case like Egyptian hieroglyphics, where we have some bone fide
>experts in the field saying, wait, there are problems with the repertoire
>and the identification of characters here, and when we are dealing with
>a very large complex set, it just makes sense to proceed carefully.
I have no problem with that. Let the big set wait for a decade for
encoding. But there's no reason not to agree on the coding
conventions, and no reason not to encode the Gardiner set.
>The other aspect here is that it is not just a matter of serious scholars
>who "can't be bothered wasting their time on such frivolity." In part,
>this is simply a problem of doing the work to get the right people
>sitting down to talk together. As for any complex script encoding, you
>need to make the time and opportunities for the character standards
>experts to communicate with the language and script specialists.
Get them onto the [EMAIL PROTECTED] list!
--
Michael Everson ** Everson Gunn Teoranta ** http://www.egt.ie
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