John Hudson <tiro at tiro dot com> wrote: > Some acknowledgement that there is disagreement in this field would > also be welcome. I don't think there is anything wrong with saying > 'this encoding unified the following writing systems based on this > analysis', while also acknowledging that this is not the only possible > analysis and that some scholars may disagree or propose altertnative > analyses.
Take Khmer as an example. TUS 4.0 explains, very carefully and delicately, that while the Unicode encoding model for Khmer does not necessarily square with the way Cambodian children learn to write, the model still works and is not horribly broken, and nobody is an idiot for having encoded it that way or for suggesting another encoding. Likewise, if Phoenician were encoded, the standard might include an explanation that the separate encoding reflects a scholarly opinion that Phoenician is a separate script, that not all scholars agree with this assessment, that there is an existing tradition for regarding Phoenician as a font shift from Hebrew and encoding Phoenician texts with Hebrew code points, and -- most importantly -- that neither scholarly opinion is "wrong" and nobody is an idiot for subscribing to one view or the other. -Doug Ewell Fullerton, California http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
