At 07:15 +0100 2001-07-06, David Starner wrote:
>>What's "bad" is that work seems to get done on fictional scripts while there
>
>Really? There's only one fictional script encoded, and one on the fast track
>to encoding.
Deseret isn't fictional. And, to be precise, we don't "fast track"
encoding. Shavian will go through the normal ballotting procedure.
>Both those are simple non-shaping, non-combining LTR scripts
>with a very well defined closed set of characters. It probably only took an
>afternoon to write up either of them. I think that more effort has been
>wasted debating fictional scripts on unicode@unicode.org than it will take
>to get them encoded.
Well there are only two on the roadmap yet to encode, Tengwar and
Cirth. Tengwar is complex, and it'd be better for us to make sure
Lepcha and Limbu and Tai and Cham are sorted out. (Now, Phoenician
and Old Persian Cuneiform will probably be pushed through sooner
rather than later, because they are very simple scripts.)
>>There are various reasons for that, the most common being that we
>>can't get enough information about them. The most common reason
>>for not having enough information is that we can't shlep enough
>>experts to us, nor shlep enough of us to the experts, to complete
>>any encoding proposals... a matter of time and funds.
>
>How does encoding fictional scripts affect this one way or another?
There are a handful of us really interested in working on getting new
stuff into the standard (entire scripts, anyway). It takes time and
expertise to do these. For some scripts, it's hard to find experts to
discuss the issues with. Or when we do find them, they don't use
e-mail or don't understand Unicode, or whatever. I'm sure that with
adequate funding, for instance, somebody like me could spend a couple
of weeks in London libraries and cultural organizations finding the
right people and nailing down the answers for a good many of the
Brahmic scripts currently roadmapped. It'd be so easy if one were
independently wealthy. :-) In the meantime, one has to pay the rent.
:-)
This problem isn't new. It's going to get worse, too, as possibly
some of the bigger companies may stop paying their employees to work
on Unicode stuff since all the major living scripts are encoded (if
not implemented).
Not that one intends to give up....
-- Michael Everson
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Jul 06 2001 - 13:48:07 EDT