At 11:11 -0700 2004-04-29, John Hudson wrote:
Peter, using a systematic transliteration between two structurally identical scripts is not comparable to hack encodings.
Vide Nuskhuri and Mkhedruli. Come on, gents. Don't try to tell me that I don't know the difference between a unifiable and a non-unifiable script. We did a pretty good roundup on what should be subsumed under Phoenician script, and NO it is NOT just a 1:1 relationship of structurally identical scripts. You can't shoebox everything into a couple of mindless rules.
The place the scripts have in history, their relevant descendants and antecedants, their letterforms, all of that has a bearing in identifying what is a unique script and what is not.
It is reasonable to set a German restaurant menu with "Bratwurst mit Senf" written in Fraktur, or an Irish restaurant menu with "Bagún agus cabáiste" written in Gaelic type, and expect people to be able to read it. (Sütterlin is a hard style of Fraktur, with which people under 50 are mostly unfamiliar, but it is not a different script, and its ductus isn't even all that bizarre if you know about Fraktur.
It is not reasonable to set a Georgian restaurant menu in Nuskhuri script. It is not reasonable to set a Hebrew restaurant menu in Phoenician script. -- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
