From: jcowan@reutershealth.com
Date: Wed May 12 2004 - 12:37:29 CDT
Peter Kirk scripsit:
> >>But have the others agreed with his judgments because they are convinced
> >>of their correctness? Or is it more that the others have trusted the
> >>judgments of the one they consider to be an expert, and have either not
> >>dared to stand up to him or have simply been unqulified to do so?
> >
> >This is laughable.
>
> Well, John, you yourself wrote only yesterday:
>
> >If the rest of you hadn't agreed with his judgments most of the
> >time, the Roadmap might look quite different.
> >
> I think "the rest of you" was intended to refer to the UTC, and "his" is
> certainly Michael's.
Indeed.
> So, I was asking for an explanation of what you
> wrote. I suggested two or three possible explanations. If there is
> another one which I have missed, please tell me what it is.
I meant the first one.
> Surely it is
> not laughable that "the others have trusted the judgments of the one
> they consider to be an expert, and have ... been unqualified to" offer
> other judgments.
Ah, but in this version you carefully prune out "dared to" and "simply"
(modifying "unqualified"), thus making the obviously insulting appear
innocuous. "Not dared to stand up to him" and "simply have been unqualified to
[stand up to him]" make Michael sound like the pope of some absurd religion.
Such is far from being the case.
> Indeed I would be pretty certain that this is quite
> close to the truth. And it is a reasonable position considering that the
> UTC members are not all script experts. The problem arises only if they
> listen to one expert only and ignore other expert opinions.
Saying that UTC members (about whom you know little or nothing) "are not all
script experts" is not to say that few, still less none except Michael,
are script experts. Except in the realm of innuendo.
> I am glad to hear it. Are these properly documented justifications on
> the public record? Should I expect to find them in the appropriate
> sections of proposals made to WG2?
No. On the other hand, with the exception of Greek vs. Coptic, there has
simply been no controversy about what is and what is not a script as opposed
to a script variant. It is only now, when controversy has arrived, that it is
appropriate to demand publicly recorded justifications.
"The Man who pretends to be a modest enquirer into the truth of
a self evident thing is a Knave."
--William Blake
> >Nobody writes Kurdish in Cyrillic any more: it's a historic use of the
> >script only.
>
> Really? Have you asked the Kurdish community living in central Russia,
I may be in error, in that case.
> If you like I will get back in contact and check up on the details.
Please do. And if you can show examples of Q and W with glyphs outside
the Latin range, such as a capital Q that is a small q writ large, it
would be even better.
> Thanks for the clarification. I accept that I don't know all of the
> history, and so I was assuming that what you said was correct, that
> Michael's judgments had been accepted on most such issues.
They *have* been accepted on most of the very few such issues that have arisen.
-- The man that wanders far jcowan@reutershealth.com from the walking tree http://www.reutershealth.com --first line of a non-existent poem by: John Cowan
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