From: John Hudson (tiro@tiro.com)
Date: Fri May 21 2004 - 17:17:13 CDT
Dean Snyder wrote:
>>those who oppose the encoding would better spend
>>their time querying that need directly to the people who have expressed
>>it than making
>>silly, repetetive arguments about fraktur on this list.
> Silly, it is not; repetitive, only because the argument is apropos, has
> never been countered, and the same, non-analogous arguments along these
> lines are being brought up repetitively.
And is swaying no one, hence silly. Someone -- anyone remember who? -- once defined
stupidity as repeatedly doing the same thing while expecting a different result.
Dean, I happen to agree with many of the points you have made from your expert position,
i.e. regarding the historical uncertainty regarding the origins of the so-called
Phoenician script and its structural identity with Hebrew regardless of the entirely
superficial glyph variation. Having spent much of the past year and a half working with
semiticists and Biblical scholars, I've come to the conclusion that they know a heck of a
lot more about semitic writing systems than typical Eurocentric writers of generic texts
on the history and classification of writing systems. I think the expert comments of
semitic scholars should be taken very seriously in considering proposals to encode semitic
scripts, including objections to such proposals on grounds of script identity.
I do not think, however, that you are now achieving anything other than annoying people. I
am not objecting to what you hope to achieve, only pointing out that you are failing to
achieve it with your current strategy.
John Hudson
-- Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com Currently reading: Typespaces, by Peter Burnhill White Mughals, by William Dalrymple Hebrew manuscripts of the Middle Ages, by Colette Sirat
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