From: Michael Maxwell (mmaxwell@casl.umd.edu)
Date: Sun Jun 24 2007 - 09:56:41 CDT
George W Gerrity wrote:
> The point is that there is ... absolutely no future for (human-readable) representations
> in bases larger than 16 ... We are not interested in how they are represented internally
> (usually binary, even when the maths engine uses base 4 or even mixed bases),
> but how to represent such numbers for transfer between humans audibly, or visually
> on some physical material.
You forget the Mayans :-). They developed a base-20 spoken and written representation system (see e.g. http://www.michielb.nl/maya/math.html). Modern Mayan languages (at least Tzeltal, with which I am familiar) still use the spoken base-20 system, although AFAIK the written system is no longer in use by the Maya themselves (as opposed to archaeologists).
Someone on this list will doubtless correct me, but I don't believe the Mayan script, either the numbers or the pictograms, has been encoded in Unicode.
Mike Maxwell
CASL/ U MD
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