Christopher John Fynn wrote at 12:53 PM on Saturday, December 27, 2003: >Dean Snyder wrote: > >> So Unicode is now prepared to provide support, >> in plain text, for the needs of paleographers? > >What would you call these >http://anubis.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n2612/n2612-3.pdf ?
Characters useful for epigraphers, not paleographers. The Greek acrophonic characters accepted into Unicode are exactly that, characters - useful in epigraphy but worthless for paleography, because they do not encode multiple glyphic variants of the same character. Compare, for example, "Epidaurean Acrophonic Symbol Two" which is 2 dots versus "Thespian Acrophonic Symbol Two" which is a crooked line. What would serve the needs of paleographers would be the encoding of all the glyphic variants of the "Thespian Acrophonic Symbol Two". Unicode will not encode that, nor should it. Respectfully, Dean A. Snyder Scholarly Technology Specialist Library Digital Programs, Sheridan Libraries Garrett Room, MSE Library, 3400 N. Charles St. Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218 office: 410 516-6850 fax: 410-516-6229 Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project: www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi
