At 15:51 -0700 2002-07-08, Asmus Freytag wrote:
>At 02:43 PM 7/8/02 +0100, Michael Everson wrote:
>>Godart says "The last sign of set A:VIII was not deleted but broke
>>off with a sliver of clay. Bearing mind the space and outline of
>>the gap, which seems to roughtly follow the outline of the broken
>>sign, it seems that the most plausible identification of the
>>mysterious sign is a 3 [TATTOOED HEAD] or a 20 [DOLIUM], unless it
>>is an 8 [GAUNTLET] or a 4 [CAPTIVE], which is less likely." I don't
>>want to encode a new character without better evidence (and
>>wouldn't for ANY script). I haven't seen anything from other
>>scholars who consider it a 46th sign.
>
>This is an insufficient reason for not coding a symbol for
>unidentified character, since it is unidentified. U+FFFD could be
>pressed into service, but would be awkward if definite agreement on
>identification is reached later, as it can be used for any
>unidentified character, not just Phaistos.
Sorry, this symbol is usually represented by a hatched pattern
showing that something is missing. Godart uses [.] in his
transcription. Since it is possible that sign 3, 20, 8, or 4 was
actually there before the identifying clay broke off, it would be
inappropriate to invent something new to represent the missing
character. Say that we found another Phaistos document with the same
string in it, and were able to decipher Phaistos, and found that the
string matched in meaning and syntax to what's on the disk. Then we
would have a superfluous character encoded.
-- Michael Everson *** Everson Typography *** http://www.evertype.com
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