Has anyone read "Absent Voices", by Rochell Altman? Taking her description of stoefwritung, it seems that Unicode needs a large block tenatively set aside for Anglo-Saxon writing, as every mark written was obviously phonetically distinct from any other, and size and vertical location were equally important.
Eh? What sort of notion is this?
After all, it was a universal writing system clearly superior to the IPA. (For one thing, everyone can read Anglo-Saxon, but IPA takes learning.) Locally important in her off-handed dismissal of modern universal writing systems and universal languages, "In the computerized world of the late-twentieth century, the UNICODE Consortium was trying to create a 'universal' computer character set."
Oh, looky. Another one who thinks that the word is supposed to be written in all caps.
Another quote is "Learning to speak a foreign language was as simple as learning to read your native tongue with stoefwritung."
And what is it that "stoef" is supposed to mean? It's not in Clark Hall & Merrit's dictionary, anyway.
It amazes me that a book subtitled "The Story of Writing Systems in the West" spends so much time on Anglo-Saxon, and that a book that claims that a writing system is a universal system is about "the West", never going east of Babylon and rarely east of Calais.
You borrowed the book from a library? I hope so.
For all my mocking, I must admit I've barely glanced through the book, and it looks like there might actually be a wealth of real information about Anglo-Saxon writing in there. I'm curious if anyone else has seen this book and has comments. --
I don't think I'd put this one into my wishlist, from your description. -- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
