From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Fri May 28 2004 - 06:28:36 CDT
On 27/05/2004 17:44, Peter Constable wrote:
> ...
>
>>I find [PC's Sally/Latisha usage scenario] a bit unreasonable for
>>
>>
>several reasons.
>
>It may well not be reasonable, or reasonable but not a scenario we
>decide to give much weight to. I just threw it out as one of many
>possible scenarios, and specifically picking something are
>representative of a kind of scenario the original proposer might have
>had in mind that is unrelated to paleography.
>
>
>
Well, I accept that this is a possible scenario. If it is the kind of
thing the proposer had in mind, why didn't he say so a month ago?
To me the answer to this argument is simple: plain text is intended to
communicate semantic content only, not visual form. If Sally is sending
material to Latisha as plain text, with no markup, she should not have
any expectations about what the result will look like - only that its
semantics will be preserved, which they will be as her Phoenician words
are still meaningful with square Hebrew glyphs (that is how many
scholars represent Phoenician text). If she wants to control its
appearance, she should use graphics or PDF format, or at least HTML
which will specify the font used on her computer (and which is the
default e-mail format in many products including those of your company,
Peter). As a 16-year-old maybe she doesn't know this, but she should be
taught it in her ICT or whatever it is called classes.
>
>
>
>>* A comparable discussion could appear involving Fraktur and Latin
>>
>>
>characters
>
>
>>and Chao and Chang.
>>
>>
>
>I agree, but only somewhat. I think those situations are probably not as
>representative of the casual-, non-specialist-user scenario, and that in
>that case Sally and Latisha are probably more likely to be paying close
>attention to the fonts being used. Even for the non-specialist
>situation, in a Fraktur/Antigua case (the Chao vs Chang is definitely
>out at least for *non-Asian* non-specialists), Sally is telling Latisha,
>"Make sure it shows up with those dark, old-English-looking characters",
>and if it's Times or Helvetica Latisha will probably know it's wrong. In
>the Phoenician case, if anything Sally's probably saying, "This will
>show up looking like pretty unfamiliar letters -- like maybe a sideways
>A or something" and Latisha might well see square Hebrew and think it
>fits the description.
>
>
>
Well, this is based on the assumption that Sally and Latisha's mother
script (if we can say that on the analogy of mother tongue) is Latin. If
they are Israelis, their mother script is Hebrew and they can easily
distinguish it from Phoenician, but they can't easily distinguish
Fraktur from Antiqua. If they are Chinese, probably they cannot easily
distinguish either pair, although perhaps they can distinguish Chao and
Chang.
>...
>
>
>>* Phoenician is an illustration more than text in this instance; if
>>
>>
>they
>
>
>>used a picture here, everything would have worked.
>>
>>
>
>True, but it takes more work to prepare a graphic than text, and it's
>not at all unreasonable to expect Sally would do the latter if she could
>have a reasonable expectation that it might work. If her software is
>likely the same as Latisha's and it comes with a Phoenician font, she
>can reasonably expect it to work. Of course, if the characters are
>unified, the software probably *didn't* come with a font... So, I guess
>this one comes out as indecisive.
>
>
>
And it would have worked with HTML e-mail, as long as Latisha had the
same fonts installed as Sally. This does not take more work to prepare.
It would also have worked with an attached Word etc document. The
scenario you are looking at is actually a rather unlikely one. We assume
that Sally has composed her document in some application that supports
some kind of rich text which specifies fonts, because otherwise she
would not see Phoenician on her own screen. But for some reason she
chooses not to send to Latisha the rich text which she has prepared, but
to convert this to plain text before sending it - something which
usually requires a deliberate extra step, either cutting and pasting
into a plain text application (in which Sally would herself see Hebrew
glyphs rather than Phoenician), deliberately choosing a non-default
plain text file format, or clicking "Yes" on some box asking if she
wants to throw away formatting information. So Sally has corrupted her
own text by discarding formatting information. Unicode cannot protect
her from her own mistakes!
I am of course assuming that Sally's computer has at least one Unicode
Hebrew font, but that is certain if she is using a recent version of
Windows. It is I suppose possible that she could set it up so that a
Phoenician font is the default display for RTL text. Well, I could set
up my computer so that Latin text appears in a Klingon font. But if I do
something strange and non-standard like that I should hardly expect
others to see the Klingon font in plain text e-mail I send to them.
On 28/05/2004 02:56, Christopher Fynn wrote:
> ...
>
>>
>> Scholars often need to seperate text by the particular
>> script the text was written in, often down to the
>> very scribe. That's done by storing it some sort
>> of tagged format, and having your search system
>> let you select based on the script--trivial in most
>> database systems. Phoencian and Hebrew are just a bit
>> broader than most distinctions.
>>
>>
>
> If this is "trivial" for scholarly users then using a tailoring to
> achieve interleaved collation and / or folding wouldn't be difficult
> for them either.
I disagree. Tailoring is possible, but it is far more complicated than
adding a script or scribe name tag to a database. Anyway, D. Starner's
requirement for detailed script marking will not be met by defining a
separate Phoenician script. I think we can assume that Unicode will not
want to encode individual scribes' handwriting as separate scripts. :-)
On 27/05/2004 20:10, Mark E. Shoulson wrote:
> ... See http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/t08/t0805.htm for some
> Talmudic discussion of the matter.
>
It is interesting to see there that Daniel 5:8 (compare v.25 - the event
can be dated to October 539 BC) is cited as an example of the mutual
illegibility of palaeo-Hebrew and square Hebrew characters. It is
suggested there that the original writing on the wall, at Belshazzar's
feast, was in square characters which only Daniel could read. In fact
the scenario was more likely the other way round: the inscription was in
palaeo-Hebrew. Daniel, born in the land of Israel, could probably read
these glyphs, but maybe the Babylonian wise men could not. The language
of the inscription is not Hebrew but Aramaic, but maybe the letters were
palaeo-Hebrew. But then the author of the book of Daniel ascribes
Daniel's ability to read the writing not to the different script but to
wisdom given by God.
On 27/05/2004 22:12, Doug Ewell wrote:
> ...
>
>I'm sure it's not true for all newspapers in all Latin-script cultures,
>but in most of the newspapers I see, the trend over the last 50 years
>has definitely been *away* from all-caps headlines. Most headlines tend
>to be in Title Caps or Sentence caps. (The front page of the New York
>Times, with its double- or triple-decked top-story headline in a
>relatively small point size, is often an exception.)
>
>
Well, typical British newspapers now seem to use all capitals for the
main front page headline and some other major headlines, and sentence
caps (not title caps which are an immediate give-away of American
origin) for other headlines. But the majority of advertisements use all
capitals.
As several people have pointed out, I was wrong to say that all capitals
headlines are easier to read than a mixed case one. They are used to
attract attention rather than for readability. Nevertheless, they are
readable, and because of this they are in regular use, both for
headlines and for advertisements - which would quickly drop something
which could not be read! And that is enough to confirm my argument.
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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