Peter Kirk wrote:
On 06/06/2004 14:38, Patrick Durusau wrote:
In other words, if you ask a Semitic scholar a question about representation of Phoenician, you are most likely getting an answer based on a criteria other than the character/glyph model of the Unicode standard.
That in no way makes the Semitic scholar's answer wrong, in fact is it right, for their domain. It has no relevance at all for a proposal to encode a script based on the Unicode character/glyph model.
I agree with you that it is the Semitic scholars' domain to judge whether the Semitic abjads share the same characters or not
That's not what Patrick said. He said that the Semiticists' analysis is correct *for* their domain, i.e. within Semitics, that judgement makes sense.
I do not mean to imply that the current proposer has not noted "the distinction between the terms character and glyph as defined in this standard." Dr Kaufman is wrong in suggesting that he does not understand glyphs or Unicode. As it seems to me, the proposer has rather rejected the considered opinions of Semitic scholars that the abjads are made up of the same characters, in favour of his own judgment that they are separate abstract characters. This is the judgment that I am questioning, on the authority of your clear statement, Patrick, of the scholarly view that the abjads share the same characters.
But what about the other people who also agreed? Including a professor of the Practice of Biblical Hebrew and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy at Harvard? Not to mention other non-Semiticist scholars, whose views also count. It isn't just his own view; we've seen that already. Stop implying it is; that distorts the facts.
~mark
