- There is a cost to deunification. To take an extreme case, suppose that we deunified Rustics, Roman Uncials, Irish Half-Uncial, Carolingian Minuscule, Textura, Fraktur, Humanist, Chancery (Italic), and English Roundhand. All often very different shapes. Searching/processing Latin text would be a nightmare.
- There is also a cost to unification. To take an extreme case, suppose we unified Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, and Hebrew (after all, they have a common ancester). Again, nightmare. So there is always a balance that we have to strike, looking at each situation carefully and assessing a number of different factors. . I want to be clear; I was not in principle against encoding Phoenician, nor was I in principle in favor of encoding it -- the proposal simply did not set out the pros and cons of different approaches. While tedious in the extreme, the resulting conversation still has shed some needed light on the situation. After all, it *is* unifying as it says "Proto-Sinaitic/Proto-Canaanite, Punic, Neo-Punic, Phoenician proper, Late Phoenician cursive, Phoenician papyrus, Siloam Hebrew, Hebrew seals, Ammonite, Moabite, Palaeo-Hebrew", but not unifying these with modern Hebrew (and I'm not sure where the cut-off point in the history of Hebrew is). Making such choices require explanation. Mark __________________________________ http://www.macchiato.com â ààààààààààààààààààààà â ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <John Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> Cc: "Mark Davis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Mon, 2004 May 03 14:55 Subject: Re: New contribution > > John Hudson wrote, > > > Mark Davis wrote: > > > > > The question for me is whether the scholarly representations of the Phoenician > > > would vary enough that in order to represent the palÃo-Hebrew (or the other > > > language/period variants), one would need to have font difference anyway. If so, > > > then it doesn't buy much to encode separately from Hebrew. If not, then it would > > > be reasonable to separate them. > > > > Given the sophistication of today's font technology, I don't think the encoding question > > can be addressed in this way. Regardless of whether 'Phoenician' letterforms are > > separately encoded, it is perfectly easy to include glyphs for these and for typical > > Hebrew square script (or any of a number of other different Hebrew script styles) in a > > single font. If the 'Phoenician' forms are not separately encoded, they can still be > > accessed as glyph variants using a variety of different mechanisms. The question is > > whether the distinction is necessary in plain text. > > > > And, that's a succinct question. Could that question be answered > without expressing opinion? > > Here's a question which isn't so succinct. > > In the event of a major schism within an encoding society, where > two sides hold divergent opinions and there is a huge chasm separating > the factions, and no consensus appears to be possible because each side > holds those cherished opinions tightly, and doing things the way that > one faction wants things done would prevent the other side from > doing things the way that they want to do them, but doing things > the way the other side wants things done would allow the opposition > to do things as they desire, what would the optimal course of action > be? > > Best regards, > > James Kass > > >
