So, that approach might meet epigraphers' needs while enabling
painless cross-variant searching, and still permit scholars to
get on with encoding their texts as they see fit.
For an example of what might be needed, see Rochelle I. S. Altman's discussion "Some Aspects of Older Writing Systems: With Focus on the DSS" at http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/orion/programs/Altman/Altman99.shtml :
Altman indicates how differences in ligaturing, height, spacing and glyph variation are used in the unpointed "Phoenician/Hebraic Writing Systems" to indicate emphasis, pause, stress and even the difference between shin and sin.
Encoding these texts with reasonable fullness would require a "stressed variant" variation selector, vowel phone variation selectors, a sin/shin variation selector as well as ZWJ and variant spaces already encoded.
Jim Allan
