Dean Snyder wrote:
those who oppose the encoding would better spend their time querying that need directly to the people who have expressed
it than making silly, repetetive arguments about fraktur on this list.
Silly, it is not; repetitive, only because the argument is apropos, has never been countered, and the same, non-analogous arguments along these lines are being brought up repetitively.
And is swaying no one, hence silly. Someone -- anyone remember who? -- once defined stupidity as repeatedly doing the same thing while expecting a different result.
Dean, I happen to agree with many of the points you have made from your expert position, i.e. regarding the historical uncertainty regarding the origins of the so-called Phoenician script and its structural identity with Hebrew regardless of the entirely superficial glyph variation. Having spent much of the past year and a half working with semiticists and Biblical scholars, I've come to the conclusion that they know a heck of a lot more about semitic writing systems than typical Eurocentric writers of generic texts on the history and classification of writing systems. I think the expert comments of semitic scholars should be taken very seriously in considering proposals to encode semitic scripts, including objections to such proposals on grounds of script identity.
I do not think, however, that you are now achieving anything other than annoying people. I am not objecting to what you hope to achieve, only pointing out that you are failing to achieve it with your current strategy.
John Hudson
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Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Currently reading: Typespaces, by Peter Burnhill White Mughals, by William Dalrymple Hebrew manuscripts of the Middle Ages, by Colette Sirat
