From: John Hudson (tiro@tiro.com)
Date: Wed May 19 2004 - 22:54:16 CDT
Ernest Cline wrote:
> I would be very surprised if there were such a cybercafe. One
> that had both a Hebrew-Phoenican and a Hebrew-Hebrew font
> with the Hebrew-Phoenician as the default would be much easier
> to believe as a possibility. Still, it is a valid point. I think that if
> Phoenician were to be unified with Hebrew, it would probably
> behoove Unicode to establish variation sequences for Phoenician.
> Even with a separate Phoenician script, it might be a good idea
> to provide variation sequences that could be used to identify
> different script styles such as Paleo-Hebrew and Punic
> in the plain text.
This is not a practical use of variation sequences if, by this, you mean use of variation
selectors. What are you going to do, add a variation selector after every single base
character in the text? Are you expecting fonts to support the tiny stylistic variations
between Phoenician, Moabite, Palaeo-Hebrew, etc. -- variations that are not even cleanly
defined by language usage -- with such sequences?
Some people seem keen on variation selectors in the same way that others are keen on PUA:
as a catch-all solution to non-existent problems.
John Hudson
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