Rick and I and Ken have all explained our position already. You're doing nothing but stirring up a whole bunch of stuff that we aren't working on now, and that we aren't going to be working on soon. You're not asking us to deal with anything actionable, and this is keeping us from doing work which IS actionable and necessary. We have received Peter Kirk's request for review. I moved Aramaic to the SMP. That doesn't mean that we will ever encode it. It does mean that further research is required. I do not have time or resources to invest in the work required to handle this request right now.
Michael, I think you are missing the point that other people do have time and resources to devote to 'further research' at this time, and this is why these discussions are happening. Personally, I'm happy to accept that the position of Aramaic in the roadmap is an open issue and is going to remain so, but as Elaine pointed out there is a lot of interest in Unicode among Biblical scholars right now -- which is a Good Thing -- and some of these people are wanting to start addressing some of the questions and issues that they are confronting as they proceed. I don't think this means you personally need to do anything -- or Rick or Ken -- but there are going to be some proposals developed for additional Hebrew characters, and some documents on different approaches to unifying or not unifying the bewildering array of early semitic writing systems, and these will be submitted via the proper channels and will eventually end up in the UTC's lap. Hopefully the work that is done -- by the people who are ready and willing to do it now -- will be helpful and well presented: up to the high standards for proposals that you have set. But will also be evidence that you don't need to do everything yourself.
JH
Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED]
What was venerated as style was nothing more than
an imperfection or flaw that revealed the guilty hand.
- Orhan Pamuk, _My name is red_
