From: UList@dfa-mail.com
Date: Mon Feb 28 2005 - 13:25:09 CST
Hello,
I am indeed familiar with your excellent and important font. Thank you for all
your work on that for Greek users.
It is exactly the two (presently unavoidable) drawbacks of your font, that I'm
trying to solve for the archaic letterforms: that they can only be used in the
non-standardized, problem-strewn PUA, or selected manually in a page layout app.
My goal is standardized, universal access in Web pages.
In looking at all of the ancient (really pre-modern) writing systems, I
believe the essential thing that needs to be done is to approach them not as
"scripts", but as "script continuums".
Organizationally, for ease of use (in encoding and changing variants), and for
data identity (of variants as a conceptual sub-catagory of the main standard
form), the only way to properly implement a "script continuum" in Unicode, I
believe, is with a "grid" rather than a "line".
That is, a script like standard Greek (plus a few additional archaic
"characterhoods") are assigned actual codepoints (forming a linear layout, x
axis), and then some means is used to make selections along the spectrum of
variants (layed out in a grid, selecting along the y axis.)
Any attempt to forceably and artificial standardize a complex ancient script
continuum like cuneiform, for example, destroys much of the purpose of
encoding in the first place (academic study of the variants themselves). At
the harshest critique, using an artificially standardized script on a highly
divergent sample -- rather than simply transliterating -- approaches the
kitsch of using an "ancient look" font to set the mood.
The best available approach for this presently, I've concluded, is a series of
fonts, all using the same standard codepoints. But this could easy mean 50 or
more different fonts for a script continuum widely spread over time and place.
Awkward, not distributable as a widely installed standard -- and striking like
the 1995 Internet where you had to switch fonts to go from Latin to Cyrillic
for example.
And amusingly/annoyingly, some people, having previously dismissed the
alternate forms as un-encodeable "merely glyph variants", now start getting
mad at me because I am putting "different scripts" on the same codepoints!
Just as there is no objectively definable line between a language and a
dialect, there is no objectively definable line between a "script" and a "variant".
Which leaves us with a shaded grid. A spectrum. A continuum.
That is the essential and unavoidable nature of ancient scripts..
I believe Unicode has simply failed to provide (or allow use of) any
appropriate architecture for encorporating this reality into Unicode.
Doug
David J. Perry wrote:
> Have you taken a look at the most recent version of my Cardo font? It
> contains, ASAIK, every extant variant of Greek letters. I have made use
> of the OT stylistic alternates feature to provide access to these glyphs
> while using the standard Greek alphabet Unicode values. You need Adobe
> InDesign to see this feature in action. (Mellel also supports OT but
> widely supported in a couple of years. The Greek variants also have PUA
> values which can be used until OT support is more widespread. (Relying
> on the PUA is a bad idea, of course, but it's all that most users have
> right now.)
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